


Rectify

by Aldhibah



Category: Tron (Movies), Tron - All Media Types, Tron: Legacy (2010)
Genre: Complete, M/M, Military, Mind Control, Slavery, Wordcount: 50.000-100.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-05
Updated: 2013-03-08
Packaged: 2017-12-04 16:08:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 72,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/712578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aldhibah/pseuds/Aldhibah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Clu's plans go horribly right.</p><p>Clu manages to bring his invasion though to the real world, but his war is a disastrous rout. Held prisoner by the government, his captors are very, very interested in what he is and what he can do. What army, after all, would turn down expendable, programmable soldiers?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Reposted by popular demand. Originally written in the early part of... 2011, I think, and taken down and then put back up again because sometimes I do dumb things and should really just learn to cope with my inferiority complex about old projects.

Clu probed his tooth with his tongue and got sharp pain and the fresh taste of metal for his efforts. It was loose in the socket, and had been ever since he’d been kicked in the face some twelve hours previous. The pain when he touched it always came as a surprise. It was half because he kept forgetting he hadn’t fixed it yet and half because of the strange rawness of sensation filtered through actual nerves and flesh. 

He hadn’t thought the user world would be like this. It was messy. Sloppy. The grid, imperfect as it was by his standards, was a logical and predictable paradise compared to this place. There at least disorder was a product of bugs in the system. Here, it was the system. If this place held order Clu had yet to find it, and maybe that went a long way to explaining Flynn’s obsession with the ISOs. Users seemed to have a pathological attachment to chaos. 

He moved his jaw too quickly and the pain brought him back into the moment. There was, of course, the larger problem. 

Clu was bound to a chair. His hands were tied behind his back, and his legs spread and fastened to the chair legs at the ankle. He hurt. It was an entirely different kind of hurt from injury on the grid. In some places the pain was duller, a steady throb like standing at the edge of the sea, and in others it was sudden and sharp. There was blood- blood, what a disgusting and unnecessary biological byproduct- in his teeth and crusted at the corner of his mouth. At some point he’d bitten through his lip.

He still wasn’t sure how things had gotten so far out of control. It had started so well- he’d outmaneuvered Flynn, and even if Flynn’s son and the ISO had slipped through his fingers he’d lost the battle and won the war. Clu had his army. He had his war machines, and his plans, and Rinzler at his side. He’d seized the open I/O tower, made his grand speech, and somehow, that was the high point. Even if he hadn’t seen it at the time, everything that came after was downhill. In retrospect there were three problems. The first was a miscalculation of scale. The room on the other end of the laser was so much smaller than he’d expected, and the arcade on the grid, with its strange arches and bright sign, had been no idiosyncrasy of Flynn’s but an exact and faithful model of the place the laser was housed. It was much too small for Clu’s machines, and much too small for his army to come through in more than ones and twos. 

The second was, much as he hated to admit it, himself. He didn’t know what he’d been expecting of the user world. A larger, more perfect grid? It wasn’t what he’d found. No. This place was a world that, on the surface, almost made sense. Beneath the veneer was pure chaos. There was no interface, or none he’d been able to find. His and his army’s skins were dull facsimiles of what they should have been. They no longer glowed, and their stripes and insignia were no more than fabric and dye. His disk vanished in transit. The control linkup Clu had so painstakingly built to connect him to his troops was gone entirely. Even his own body felt wrong, heavier and hotter; more solid, somehow. New flesh.

They’d- he’d- tried to work with what he had. And that was his third mistake.

He’d realized too late that grid weapons were useless. The physical laws were different. Everything was cruder, messier. There was no order. They had no disks. None of their weapons could find energy reserves to draw from, but that didn’t stop the users, no. They mowed his army down with little bits of explosive steel and heavy machines. Users, it turned out, and by extension the new bodies Clu had knitted together, didn’t come apart in neat pieces when killed. They bled and broke. Worst of all he couldn’t fix any of it, not his army or himself. It was crude and ugly and inelegant but effective, and it had taken him days afterward to come to terms with how thoroughly he’d been beaten.

Now he was here. Here, with blood in his teeth and plastic ties cutting into his wrists, in nothing but an orange jumpsuit. His world had narrowed to rooms made of concrete and fluorescent lights and no windows, and men with guns at the doors. He could smell the stink of his own unwashed body. In that moment he almost laughed at his own stupidity. Why had he wanted to come here? What had possessed him to think he might even make it his own?

The tooth he’d been worrying at was on the top left, first after the molar, and he had to force himself to leave it alone. He couldn’t pull up his own code and fix it, and healing the user way, if it healed at all, was all he had. Could users grow back their teeth? Clu doubted it. Everything else about them seemed designed to be as inefficient as possible. 

There were three men in the room with him. They were all dressed the same way, down to the little colored patches on their sleeves. Clu assumed that meant the same thing here as it did on the grid. It was a uniform, which meant they were all in service to… Someone, whoever that might be. Did users have a single leader, or was it a distributed network? Not that it really mattered- one of the men was a guard, and stayed by the door with his gun in his hands. The other two he’d nicknamed. There was the ugly one (self-explanatory) and the short one (also self-explanatory). Clu had already used up most of his imaginative names on the others who’d come and gone. These two were the hands-on type, which was to say they seemed to enjoy the sounds he made when kicked in the ribs. 

Blood collected in his mouth and he spit it out. It stained his jumpsuit a muddy black-red, but he couldn’t find it in himself to care. The ugly one loomed over him. 

“We know you’re not human.”

“That’s funny,” Clu’s mouth was throbbing. He wanted to say of course not, you pack of idiots. “I was going to say the same thing about you.” The short one punched him in the gut. Clu wheezed, curled into it, clenched his teeth and wished he hadn’t.

“Hey Ramirez, you ever watch Battlestar?” said ugly, over his shoulder. The man at the door shrugged. “It’s not bad. Johnson’s got some disks if you want ‘em. Anyway, there’s these things called cylons, right? And they look just like people, but they’re not.” He crouched down until he was eye level with Clu, and right up in his face. Clu could see the sweat-dampness of his collar, the wet sheen of the fluid that lubricated the man’s eyes. It repulsed him as his own blood repulsed him. “So what are you? Because we tested your blood, you know, and it’s not quite right. Things where they shouldn’t be, things people don’t even have,” he grabbed Clu’s chin. “You were made, not born.” Clu snapped at the hand. It earned him another blow. For a few seconds he only saw stars, and the ugly one was already talking by the time Clu was paying attention. “-Kevin Flynn.”

Clu opened and closed his mouth, just to make sure nothing else had been knocked loose. “What about him?” 

The short one barked a sharp laugh. “You ever look in a mirror?”

“…No?”

This, inexplicably, earned him another round of violence. For a few minutes the world narrowed down to sharp blows, quick bursts of pain and his own stuttered breathing. A booted foot kicked him sideways and he crashed, chair and all, onto the floor. Clu’s arms were pinned between the metal frame and the concrete. He bit his tongue. The short one put his foot on Clu’s chest, and bore down just enough to make it hard to breathe. 

“What are you? When is the next wave coming?”

Clu almost smiled but fought it back. They thought there was another army coming, after his disastrous attempt at war? “What do you think I am?”

“I think you’re a worthless jackass, is what I think,” the ugly one waved a hand to the short one. “Get him back up. You,” he nodded at the guard, “bring in the other one.”

Other one?

In the time it took to tip him back upright, the guard had opened the door a crack and was talking to someone outside. Clu’s tongue went back to his loose tooth. It was maddening; he couldn’t keep it away. There was still that pain and the half-fascination half-repulsion that came along with it. He hated being a biological creature. He missed the feel of pure energy. He missed his body being a mere cipher for his underlying code, and not this thing made of meat and jelly, that leaked and bled and stank. 

There was a noise and Clu snapped out of his self-pity. They were bringing in a chair- heavy, metal, just like his- and after that, between two more guards, came Rinzler. They’d stripped him of his mask. He was wearing an orange jumpsuit, just like Clu, and if anything looked even worse than he did. Rinzler was cut and bruised, his head lolling like he’d been drugged. He still had that lightcycle purr on every breath, but it sounded wetter. The sparking scar on his throat (and Clu still regretted doing that, sometimes) had been replaced with a knotted mass of white flesh.

“This one’s been giving us trouble.” The short one knotted his hand in Rinzler’s hair and pulled his head back. Rinzler’s eyes were unfocused and the left one so bruised even his sclera was a red patch in a mass of swollen black and green. “But you know each other, don’t you? He was protecting you during the fighting. Always at your side. Probably your only soldier with half a brain.” Rinzler’s eyelids fluttered like he was struggling to wake up more than halfway, and his purr grew more labored. The short one let go. “But half a brain, no voice. There’s always something. I think you can guess how this is going to go.”

It was an old technique. Clu remembered things playing out like this a few times before, only he’d been the one asking the questions. When you had two conspirators and one wouldn’t talk, you got them together and hurt one of them until the other broke down. Simple and effective: unfortunately for his captors, only one of them spoke and the other was very, very resistant to pain. Clu had wired Rinzler that way. He knew exactly how far Rinzler could be pushed, and it was farther than these men were willing to go. At least, he hoped so.

Ugly loomed over him. “What are you?” 

Clu glared up at him and delved deep into his own mind, the parts that were left over from someone else and mostly useless trivialities besides. Trivialities were what he needed right now. “I’m the queen of the outlands, what do you think?”

The short one hit Rinzler, and his purring stuttered. “Who made you? Flynn? Encom? The Chinese?”

“The what?” The room smelled like sweat and blood- two scents he was becoming intimately familiar with these past few days- and underneath it a chemical tinge Clu didn’t recognize. They couldn’t just reset the room. Did they have to clean it by hand? He didn’t envy them the job. Across the room Rinzler took another blow.

“When’s the next attack?”

That again. Clu shut his eyes. “You have a very annoying voice.” Again, there was the sound of flesh impacting flesh.

“See?” said the ugly one, “cocky little jackass, like I said.”

Clu opened his eyes. “I think it was worthless jackass, actually.” 

Rinzler was, against all odds, looking a little more aware. He was focused on Clu, as expressionless as he’d ever been, but when the short one hit him Rinzler let his head turn with the blow rather than hanging limp. There had to be something to pain for users. Their bodies, and his now as well, were all chemical interactions. It had to trigger something. Every time Rinzler was hit his eyes looked a little sharper, a little more as they should have been. He could work with that.

“Worthless and cocky.” The ugly one made a hand signal, and the short one punched Rinzler in the jaw, and then in the side of his head. Then he didn’t stop. “See, bad things happen to cocky, worthless jackasses, and their friends. Now,” ugly came around behind Clu and knotted his hands in Clu’s hair, so he couldn’t look away from Rinzler. “Again. I think you know the questions by now. What are the answers?”

Across the room, Rinzler was absorbing the blows raining down on him with little more than half-voiced yelps and groans. There was a catch to his breathing that suggested something broken, and when the light hit his bruised eye just right it looked like an open wound. Maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea after all, but there was no turning back now. Clu entertained a brief fantasy of himself as he had been, and Rinzler as he had been, and derezzing the lot of the users into their component bits and breaking out by force. “If you think either one of us is going to tell you anything, you’re even more of an idiot than you look like.”

“Right,” said ugly, “worthless, cocky, and stupid.” He smashed Clu’s nose with an open palm, and from there things were a blur. He seemed to hurt everywhere at once. There was a ringing in his ears, and a mistimed gasp left him choking on inhaled saliva for a few long seconds. A hard jab to his jaw was a sharp pain, sharp as being stabbed, and he spit out a jagged lump of tooth. So much for healing.

There was a sound across the room. A shout, and an impact, and Clu looked up to see the blur of the short one on the ground and Rinzler in an awkward hunch, still bound to his chair but only by his wrists. Clu threw himself sideways. The impact was agony but he caught the ugly one behind the knees on the way down. Rinzler was already in the air. He’d jumped, gained as much speed and height as he’d been able. Time seemed to slow as Rinzler twisted his body. He’d always been graceful, and the chair came down on a single leg, right on top of the ugly one’s head. All that weight and pressure on a single point.

Clu always had loved physics.


	2. Chapter 2

Rinzler bounced off the concrete at the end of his fall. His head rang. There was another needle in his arm before he could work his way back upright, and things went soft and slow. He could hear Clu laughing. There was blood on the floor, and something fleshy, and a tooth. Acceptable damages for limited circumstances. Time slipped by in a haze. He was hauled upright, and then there were hallways and fluorescent lights, his own numb, clumsy feet, and a dull awareness of being surrounded by hands and sharp, jabbing elbows. He’d left Clu behind, somewhere. That was wrong. It was against every fiber of his being to leave Clu unprotected, but he couldn’t gather himself enough to fight. When they untied his hands and tossed him into his cell his reflexes were too slow to catch himself before cracking his head on the concrete. Again. Even through the drug haze, it hurt. His groan came out as a liquid growl.

The cells were tiny. Six feet wide, ten feet deep. A sink, a toilet, and two thin bunks protruding from the wall. The lights swam in and out focus above him. They were white and blinding. He buried his face in his arm. 

“Rinzler?”

Then there was his cellmate. 

Rinzler dragged his limbs in- harder than it looked, at the moment- and shaded his face with his hand before opening his eyes again. Jarvis was perched on the lower bunk, peering down at him like he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. Jarvis was still skinny, the orange jumpsuit baggy and too short at the wrists. The color made him look even paler than he already was.

Jarvis nudged him with his foot. “Are you alive?”

Rinzler batted the foot away and hauled himself up onto the bunk, hand over hand. He’d sustained damage, structural as well as superficial. His purr was a rasp. It was difficult to think in terms of flesh over energy. He had no guidelines for this, no way of knowing the extent of the damage and no way to defragment himself. At the moment, it was difficult to think at all. Jarvis shifted out of his way. Rinzler wormed his way to the back of the bunk, where it met the wall. It was darkest there. Jarvis was still staring at him, and Rinzler stared back until Jarvis looked away. Jarvis was the least suited of them to withstanding interrogation. He was a good tactician and manager, but a bad soldier and a coward. Maybe it would be better to kill him before their captors broke him. It wouldn’t take much.

“You look terrible,” said Jarvis, and leaned back when Rinzler glared at him. “Not that- I mean- never mind.” He touched Rinzler’s collarbone. “What is that, paint?” Out of the corner of his eye, Rinzler could see the garish purple-yellow mottling of his own skin. Jarvis’ touch sent a bolt of pain up his spine and Rinzler growled at him. Jarvis backed off. “Fine. Be like that. Why do I bother?”

Rinzler tuned him out and attempted a self-diagnostic. This body’s functions were pure guesswork, but nothing seemed too damaged to keep using and his superficial wounds had stopped leaking. He filed them under minor annoyances to be dealt with at a later time. If only he could think- his ideas were too slippery to hold onto, and had been since he’d derezzed three users the first time they’d tried to question him. It was the needles, and whatever bit of malicious code they contained. Jarvis got up and began pacing in the narrow space between the bunks and the wall. Back and forth, back and forth, and finally Rinzler grabbed at Jarvis’ leg as he passed to make him stop. 

Jarvis dodged and then looked surprised that he had. “You really are badly off.” His only answer was Rinzler’s glaring. “Not that you care what I have to say. I’m just talking to myself, aren’t I?”

It was a monumental effort for Rinzler to force words through his damaged vocal synthesizers- or here, whatever had replaced them- but sometimes the sound of his own gravel-and-broken-glass voice was worth it. “Stop,” he said, “talking.”

“Did you just use up your word quota for the cycle?” said Jarvis, but he was silent after that. Rinzler dragged up the thin blanket to block out the light and let the sedative haze drag him down. It was almost enjoyable, in its way. For a time nothing hurt, in his head or outside of it. When he came to, Jarvis was gone.

**

The scene had kept a smile on Clu’s face all the way back to his cell. They’d accomplished essentially nothing, but it was a small victory nonetheless. He hoped the user was dead. He wished he’d been the one to do it, but Rinzler was an acceptable alternative.

His cell was tiny and irritatingly bright. He had no cellmate. Clu cleaned himself up, but the front of his coveralls were stiff with blood, and he could feel his jaw swelling around the newly empty socket. He longed for his disk. He could rewrite himself and erase the damage in seconds. Instead he had… This. Tissues and enzymes, clots and scars and bruises. Disgusting. Why had users ever inspired reverence in any program? They were hideous creatures and their world was the same way. There were no clean lines. The concrete walls of his cell were riddled with minute holes and lumps. His jumpsuit was secondhand and starting to fray at the wrist. The object that was closest to perfection was the tiny glass panel in the door, and even that surface was host to a thousand tiny scratches.

He longed to find this place’s source code and purify it. Write out the inefficiencies and the grotesqueries that this place’s programmer had injected seemingly for no purpose but their own perverse pleasure. What was making his skin crawl was that he was becoming less and less sure that this place had code, or ran on any sort of logic at all. Somewhere in the back of his mind he’d always assumed the users to be some kind of higher grid subset, and logically they had a programmer. But if he thought of it that way, then that programmer had a programmer, and so on and so on onto infinity. What had the user said? You were made, not born? Of course he’d been made, but… Did that imply that users hadn’t?

A shiver of existential disgust ran through him at the idea. The user world, then, was what the grid would have become if he’d allowed the ISOs to live. Nothing but entropy tearing at everything until all logic had been forced to succumb. He was glad he’d purified the grid of their kind when he’d had the chance. The grid turned into this- it was too much to imagine.

**

The clang of metal on metal snapped Rinzler awake. He looked up to see Jarvis being returned. They were only slightly gentler with him than they’d been with Rinzler, and Jarvis still ended up on the floor, but broke his fall with his hands instead of his face. The door slammed shut behind him and the cell was back to being its own little world, only connected to the rest by a six-inch viewport covered in wire mesh.

Jarvis lay on the floor for a long few minutes. Rinzler watched him out of the corner of his eye. He didn’t look damaged, at least not overtly. When Jarvis finally hauled himself up he crawled onto the lower bunk as Rinzler had done. Rinzler made a noise of displeasure as Jarvis knocked against his legs, but wasn’t bothered enough to actually kick him off. Up close, Rinzler could see Jarvis trembling, and the little hairs on the back of his neck standing straight. They’d been captive long enough that Jarvis’ head was coated in a fine stubble. His skin looked damp, and his collar was soaking wet.

“They… With the water,” said Jarvis, and fell silent. Rinzler waited for the rest, but it didn’t seem to be forthcoming. A bead of water ran down from behind Jarvis’ ear and soaked into his collar. “I couldn’t breathe. I thought-“ A deep breath sent him into a coughing fit. When it subsided, his voice sounded rougher than before. “I thought they weren’t going to stop.” 

Rinzler didn’t have much experience with reassuring damaged programs, and no real want to start now, but he had to admit he’d rather be beaten than drowned. Even breathing, by itself, was a new and foreign thing. He shifted and Jarvis tensed.

“I didn’t tell them anything.”

Maybe he wasn’t as useless as Rinzler had thought. He tried to pitch his purr low enough to convey approval, but Jarvis didn’t seem reassured. If the program had anything, it was an undying sense of self-preservation, and he never let his guard down around Rinzler. Rinzler encouraged that. It was a smart way to live.

“I didn’t. I mean it.” Another drop of water snaked down his neck. He was shivering in earnest, and Rinzler kicked the thin blanket over him.

In the end, what he had or hadn’t said turned out not to matter.


	3. Chapter 3

It was three days before they dragged Clu out of his cell again. Three days of no one so much as speaking to him, three days of pacing and meals that tasted like dust and trying with all his might to pry the little glass panel out of the door. It defied all his efforts. He hadn’t so much as managed to crack it. He didn’t even know what he wanted with the thing, it wasn’t even big enough for him to squeeze through. It was just something to do.

They didn’t take him to the interrogation rooms. Instead, there was an elevator ride and a blindfold, and then he was shoved into a car with a gun digging into his back. He wondered what they thought he was capable of.

“Where are you taking me?”

Silence.

“Am I being derezzed?”

More silence.

When the car stopped, the blindfold rode up on his nose and he caught half a second of sunlight. The world in color was overwhelming. The sky was a blue so deep he thought he could fall into it forever, and then it was gone, the blindfold was back in place, and he was being pushed into another building. He lost track of the turns he’d taken after a handful of rights and lefts. When they finally took the blindfold off he was in another elevator, this one going down. It was a drab little grey cube that opened onto a drab grey hallway. There were more concrete walls, more fluorescent lights and more users in matching uniforms. They might as well have driven him in a big circle for how different the place looked from his prison. 

Then they went into a room that was so like the grid that it made him stumble. The guards pushed him on. It was white, all slick plastics and tile in a way that made him think of Flynn’s hideaway in the outlands. In the center of the room was the squat shape of Flynn’s laser. The laser was pointing at an empty chair, and the thing itself was wired into a series of glass-fronted towers that Clu realized, uneasily, were server banks. Flynn’s computer- his grid- had been so much smaller. 

A group of users stood off to the side. Two were in uniform and three wore white coats. One in particular looked more important than the others; his uniform was bristling with stripes and pins. Clu drew himself up and imagined he was still what he had once been. In his mind, he was clean and uninjured. He was wearing black and gold instead of garish orange. He could not be hurt. 

“You’ve figured it out, then? Slow of you.” Clu tilted his head to cast his bruises in the most garish possible light. “Was any of this really necessary?” 

The more important user- superuser? Looked in his direction but not really at him, like Clu was just an unusually loud piece of furniture. That stung. “Sit the subject down.”

The guards started walking before Clu did, and after nearly falling he dug in his heels. It didn’t help. The floor was too slick for traction and he just ended up looking like a petulant child. They pushed Clu into the chair and fixed his wrists in place with zipties. The laser’s barrel looked him straight in the face. “Do you even know what you’re doing?” Clu twisted to the side as far as he could go, “If you set that up wrong-“

“Face forward, please.”

One of the other users was already working on the other side of the room. The laser hummed to life and Clu redoubled his efforts to get free. All he got were the plastic cuffs biting into his skin. One of the users kicked him in the shin. “The man said face forward.”

“T minus sixty, people,” said the scientist, “everyone behind the safety line. We don’t want any accidents.” Suddenly Clu was alone with the laser. Everyone else, even the guards that were there purely to manhandle him, crowded on the far side of the room behind a thin blue stripe on the floor. The laser’s hum increased in pitch. It was louder than he remembered. Was this thing working? Clu glared bitterly at the lot of them.

“If this blows me to pieces, I hope you have to clean up the mess.”

“Three,” said the scientist, “two, one-“

The room dissolved in a rush of black and white and neon streaks. Clu could feel himself coming apart and being remade. He’d felt it once before, when he’d left the grid. It wasn’t a sensation easily put into words. It was static electricity and deresolution without pain, and being put back together with parts that were almost shaped the same, but not quite. When it stopped, he felt… Bigger. There was an awareness of himself he didn’t know he’d been missing until that moment, a whole new sense unfurling. He could feel the energy patterns in his skin and how they related to the ground under his feet and the shape of the world around him. He opened his eyes.

It looked a lot like the room he’d just left, except emptier. It was a blinding bright gridwork of walls, floors and ceilings with just enough space to pace in and hardly bigger than two cells stuck together. There were no doors or windows. Clu ran his hand along the wall and reveled in its polygon-perfect smoothness anyway. It was something he could fix later. He’d nearly forgotten how good it felt to be connected to a system, to be a physical part of a world bigger than himself. The disk on his back was a counterweight that he never wanted to lose again. Clu ran his hands up the hated orange jumpsuit before grinning and peeling the disk off his back. He could fix himself. He could even make improvements. They never should have put him back on the grid if they wanted to keep him.

He sat down cross-legged and let his disk project an abstraction of himself upward. The damaged code was so obvious to him it might as well have been lit up in pulsing neon. There was his missing tooth, and there was the cut on his cheek, and the scrapes and bruises. They were repaired with a flick of his wrist. His clothes were a little more complicated. He didn’t have the template, so he knit them into being from the remains of his jumpsuit. They writhed over him like an oil slick, bleeding black and glowing gold. A cloak bloomed from his shoulders and pooled on the floor around him. The grime and unpleasantness was wiped away with a thought. It felt even better than he remembered.

Clu reaffixed his disk and stood. The monochrome was all well and good, but he preferred black on white, not white on black. He reached out a tendril of will for the system profile and found it just out of his reach, slick as glass. He frowned and tried harder. It was there, in the system, but he couldn’t touch it. He tried for the root directory, and finally direct command-line access. The best thing he could pull up was a sort of system overview that hovered in midair, ghostlike. He couldn’t find any way to interact with it. The users had put him in here only to lock him out of the system?

“I’m not playing your games,” he called. Clu didn’t know if the users could even understand anything he said from here. “Do you hear me? I’m not going to dance for your amusement.” 

There was no reply. Clu curled his lip and inspected the walls. If he couldn’t code his way out there had to be some loophole he could exploit manually.

After going over the room twice, he was losing hope. The walls were slick and solid. There were no gaps, no holes, not so much as a memory leak. He searched the ceiling and then the floor, down on his hands and knees, probing at the points where the tiles intersected. There was nothing. Every seam was solid, every angle flush with the next. He leaned down to inspect an edge for the third time and his knee buckled under him.

He felt… Strange. It was a buzzing, tingling feeling, echoing through the circuits in his hands and up into his shoulders. Like falling into an energy pool but unpleasant. Dizzying. He staggered back upright only to overbalance and fall backwards in a graceless heap. The room was warping around him, fractalling off into oblivion- or was it? The buzzing crawled over him, up into his head, in his teeth, vibrating and settling into the space behind his eyes. There was pressure, building and building in every inch of him until his skin was too tight. The gold stripes on his skin were sharp strings, pulled too far and biting into him until he felt that he’d split open. There was a feeling like those first few instants with Flynn, when he was new, but wrong. He was being torn in half but it didn’t hurt. Everything was a blur, and then there were too many arms/hands/heads/feet/legs overlapping in the same space and they fell apart, one set to the left and one set to the right. Clu looked at Clu. He’d been copied. 

He could see the copy had realized exactly the same thing. Clu caught his breath and looked at his double. “What are they playing at?”

“They’re seeing what they can get away with, I imagine.”

“Idiots.”

“Dangerous idiots,” said his copy, “if we could just get out of this box we could turn this right around.”

“Have you got any ideas?”

The other Clu raised his eyebrows. “What do you think?”

“It was worth a shot.” Clu straightened up. “I-“

A wall came slamming down between them. Clu scrambled backwards. The other Clu did the same, only in the other direction, and then they were separated. The wall was thick but transparent. When nothing else happened after that, Clu edged a little closer to inspect it. His copy knocked on it, frowned at him from the other side and mouthed read-only partition?

“I… Don’t think so,” Clu ran his fingers down the wall, “for us, yes, but the permissions are strange.”

Admin privileges, mouthed the other Clu, there’s a third- 

He broke off mid-sentence. There was a hideous sound from above; a creaking and grinding. The two of them looked up. The ceiling was being peeled off in a ragged strip. Outside of the room was- Clu couldn’t describe it. At first he thought it was a mass of small objects moving in the dark. It didn’t make sense until it got closer, and then it was horrifying. The program looking down at them was huge and only vaguely resembled a user. Its fingers ended in needle points. It had no face that Clu could see but high above, there were two luminous discs glowing like eyes in the dark. There was something misshapen about it, half-glimpsed shapes moving where nothing should be. He took an involuntary step back, then another. The needle-hands came down and he flinched, but they’d come down on the other side of the partition. It pinned his copy flat against the ground.

Clu beat on the partition with his fists. It made a dull thumping sound; he doubted his copy or the thing could even hear him. He could see his copy’s mouth gaping wide, his mouth forming words Clu couldn’t catch, and the thing started flaying him line by line. Discarded bytes and code fragments scattered on the ground like shattered crystal. The other Clu’s struggles grew more and more sluggish, more and more hopeless, until he was just an empty shell of a thing. Finally, when the thing dug too deep, he derezzed altogether. Clu found himself retreating until his back hit the wall. He slid down to sit on his heels. This was- this was hideous.

The thing picked through his copy’s glittering remains. It seemed bored after a few passes and Clu pressed himself back against the wall as if he could disappear into it. Then the thing turned its attention on him. The partition disappeared. As if the last few horrifying moments had never happened, Clu entertained the thought, for a split second, that it was over. Then the shivering, the electric current, the pressure under his skin returned. It was splitting him again. 

The thing chewed through iterations like a thresher. Each time took a little longer, but that didn’t matter when each time meant another death for himself. Each split was a gamble- which side of the partition would he land on? Not that it would matter, in the end. He was the original as much as the Clu on the other side of the glass was the original. The only question was how long he’d live with that knowledge. 

The sixth time he was split the thing was more delicate. Instead of butchery it approached the copy’s code as a surgeon- an untrained, idiot surgeon, but it was more subtle than tearing him apart to see how he worked. The splicing and reattaching of code was neatly done, even if the pieces used were barely a hair above random. Clu couldn’t figure out what it was trying to do. He couldn’t see a plan or a pattern but it was obviously trying for something, though he wasn’t sure he wanted to know what.

By the eleventh split the copies didn’t fight. The thing had found a way to sedate them or maybe just paralyze them, and they lay beneath the thing’s ungentle ministrations like empty husks. By the eighteenth it was focusing on certain areas and specific lines of code. When the thing was done, the copy didn’t derezz. Instead it lay under the thing’s hand, unmoving, and the thing prodded it as if it expected something to happen. The motion made the copy’s head roll to the side. Clu couldn’t meet its blank, empty eyes. When nothing more happened the thing derezzed the failure and started again.

Sixty-seven times.

It had gone through sixty-seven copies. Each was cut up and dispatched as a failure. Clu still couldn’t tell what it wanted. He couldn’t see what it was actually doing at this distance, but all it had produced so far was a series of lobotomized shells. When the sixty-eighth was finished, the copy had the same limp body and blank eyes as all the others. Clu had kept watching the whole way though out of what might have been morbid curiosity, but was more a grim certainty that if he took his eyes off the thing for a moment it would find something even worse to amuse itself with. 

The thing gestured, or maybe there was some spoken command that Clu couldn’t hear. The copy sat up.

It moved weirdly, all jerky and disconnected like each individual limb had to be moved by itself. The motion made Clu’s skin crawl. It looked like… It looked like someone had hollowed out his skin and left it still walking. On the other side of the glass the copy wobbled to its feet. Clu tensed, waiting for something to happen, but nothing did. After a long moment the thing withdrew and the ceiling was peeled back over the room like it had always been there. When the partition lifted, Clu didn’t trust the place enough to investigate. The copy, though, was still standing where the thing had left it. 

Clu slid along the wall towards it. He kept one eye on the ceiling in case the thing came back. Up close the copy looked like a wax doll. Its face was slack, its eyes half-lidded. Its posture was off. He could swear that even its circuits glow was duller, the color more of an anemic yellow than gold. The copy’s eyes didn’t track him. 

“You,” said Clu, “Look at me. Anyone home?” The copy didn’t answer. Clu poked it in the chest and it swayed a little, but didn’t otherwise react. It was eerie seeing himself like this. He put his hand on the copy’s disk and let its general architecture spill out in blue nodes and lines. 

He’d been wrong about the thing’s surgical skill. It was a butcher shop in there. Great swathes of code were missing, and others lay in tatters. The copy had no user privileges, no memory cache, and worst of all, its higher neural architecture was almost completely missing. If the copy had been a user it would have been like removing everything but the brainstem. Clu dropped his hand and let the virtual hierarchy dissolve into the air. “What do they want with you?”

“Unknown parameter value.”

“You can still speak?” Clu was genuinely surprised. “What are you for?”

“Yes. Unknown parameter value.”

“What is your function?”

“Unknown parameter value.”

“Do you have a function?”

“Unknown parameter value.”

Clu made a noise of frustration. It was as pointless as trying to get information out of a bit. The thing had lobotomized the copy, but left it walking and just on the edge of coherent function. The question was why. What was the point in reducing something as advanced as himself to the level of a basic script? Maybe he could get a proper answer if he made his questions simpler. Something more basic and factual, just to find out where the baselines stood. “Give me your user changelog.”

“Program creation 1985 April 16, 19:37. User Kevin Flynn,” the copy’s voice was a dead monotone, “alteration, 2011 January 12, 12:19. Usergroup Echo-Juliet-One. Alteration, 2011 January 12, 12:20. Usergroup Echo-Juliet-One. Alteration, 2011 January 12, 12:21. Usergroup Echo-Jul-“

“Stop,” said Clu, and was half surprised when the copy did. 

There was a noise behind them. Clu spun on his heel, already certain the thing was back, but the ceiling was intact. Instead, one of the walls had opened up into a small alcove. It didn’t seem to have a floor or ceiling but contained a shaft of bright light. More than anything it looked like an I/O tower in extreme miniature. Obviously he was supposed to go back to the user world, but Clu wasn’t so eager to return to sweat and dirt and heavy, immutable flesh. On the other hand, this tiny box of a grid wasn’t very inviting either.

The floor tilted sharply to the side. Clu lost his footing as the room tipped up and he slid into the wall hard. The copy hit the wall beside him in a graceless tangle of limbs, and the room was upended completely; Clu found himself lying on the wall. He scrabbled for handholds and found nothing. The room tilted again, towards the glowing alcove. Clu’s hands slipped on the panels. Digging in his heels and palms slowed the slide, but barely. “I don’t appreciate being toyed with,” he called, but he doubted the users could hear him, “you could have just waited!” The room shook, hard, and he lost his tenuous grip. His doppelganger tumbled into the light and disappeared; he followed seconds after.

Being reconstituted into flesh felt much the same as the reverse. Still, Clu hated every subjective second of it. Every molecule knitted into place was a thousand-pound weight, and every scrap of flesh and bone a curse. When the machine spit him out into the user world he didn’t breathe until it burned, just for the sake of delaying the moment he had to acknowledge organic limitations that much longer. He opened his eyes to find himself still wearing black and gold. The only upside to the situation was that he’d destroyed that filthy orange jumpsuit.

The chair had been moved while he’d been inside, and Clu had emerged on his feet. The copy had appeared as well. It stood there as stupidly as it had on that pale imitation of the grid, and Clu glared at the users still crowded behind the safety lines. “So,” he said, “what was the point? You want a stupid version of me that badly?” 

No one paid any attention to him. The users in white coats were talking excitedly among themselves, and the superuser was looking between Clu and his copy with calculation in his eyes. One of the scientists clicked his pen and nodded to the guards. “Hold the subject, please.”

The guards had Clu’s arms before he had time to react. The scientist dug in his pocket and came up with a narrow silver cylinder with a plastic cap on the end. He twisted it off, and there was a blade underneath. “What do you think you’re doing?” Clu struggled against the guards as the little triangular blade got closer. Having his code flayed was bad enough. The same happening to his skin… No. No. He tried to kick the user away. “Get away from me-“

“Stand still.” One of the guards jabbed him in the ribs with his gun. “Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”

The knife got closer. Was it better to be cut or shot? Every muscle in his body was rigid, but the scientist just cut off a piece of Clu’s cloak and retreated.

“You people are savages,” Clu muttered. And still, no one was paying attention to a single thing he said. He was a dumb animal to them, there for their amusement. On his right, the copy was being subjected to an entirely different sort of examination. The superuser was right up in front of it, turning its head from side to side and even inspecting its teeth. He fingered its collar, its hair, and flicked its cheek with a fingernail. Clu felt molested by proxy.

The superuser grunted and stepped back. “I’ve got to hand it to you- that’s amazing. Almost human.” He looked at Clu. “Just like the other one.”

Clu frowned. “I’m right here, you know.”

“And this one doesn’t have a sass mouth. An improvement all around, I’d say.”

“You call that thing an improvement? It’s not sentient. It’s barely even conscious, and all because you-“ a gloved hand covered Clu’s mouth. He bit, but the glove was thick and padded. The guard didn’t seem to feel it.

“Thank you, sergeant,” said the superuser, “now, what can this thing do?”

The lead scientist was tapping away on his handheld tablet and barely looked up. “We don’t know yet, sir. This was the first trial, but it should be receptive to orders. Why don’t you put it through its paces?”

The superuser stepped back. “Raise your right hand.” 

The copy obliged. The scientist typed even more furiously than before, and the superuser looked approving. 

“Lower that hand. What’s your name?”

“Codified Likeness Utility 2.0_1.”

“Who do you serve?”

“User test group Echo-Juliet-One.”

The superuser looked at the scientist. The scientist shrugged. “Test case group, General. We can make it more specific once we fine-tune the process.”

“Hm.” The superuser turned back to the copy, took a pen out of his pocket, and tossed it at the opposite wall. “Pick that up.”

There was a long moment where Clu thought the copy wasn’t going to obey, but then it turned and started walking. There was a wrongness to it, a mechanical gracelessness that made his skin crawl. Clu felt cold inside. This was what they were aiming for? Rectification? That horrific thing in the cell, then, had been a user avatar in realtime, and little more than a shell itself. How could the users be so bad at rectification when even Clu himself could knit code together by instinct? Flynn would never have- 

He cut the thought off. Clu really didn’t need to be thinking about Flynn right now. 

Instead he turned his attention back to the copy. There was something off about it, now that he was looking closely. Something he couldn’t put his finger on. While picking up the pen it stumbled just slightly, but no one else seemed to notice. Its skin looked a little too damp to be normal.

“Sir,” said the scientist, “if you don’t mind, we have some basic tests to run through?”

The superuser nodded. “I’ve satisfied my curiosity. You’ve done some fine work here today, Dr. Hellard.” He stepped back and rejoined the group of observers on the far side of the room. Clu followed him with his eyes, willing him to suddenly fall down dead or maybe trip and impale himself on his own medals. It didn’t happen. 

When he looked back at the copy it looked even worse than before. The dampness had become a sheen of sweat. He could see its hands trembling. Its eyes were half-shut, and even the scientist seemed to notice the change. The user leaned forward to peer at it.

“What’s wrong with this thing?” The scientist poked it with his pen. The copy pitched forward without warning and took the scientist with it. There was sudden chaos- the hand was loosed from his mouth, there was shouting- and as suddenly as it had started, it ended. Maybe they’d thought the copy had attacked, but no. It lay on the ground in a heap. The user sat a few feet away, staring at a bright red patch on his sleeve.

One of the guards helped him up. “Are you all right, sir?”

“Fine,” said the user, “fine. It… It isn’t mine.”

The copy’s chest was heaving. It was gasping like a dying thing, and when they turned it over Clu could see blood streaking its nose, bubbling from its mouth, even leaking in a slow ooze from the corners of its eyes. It stared up at the ceiling, unblinking, and its fingertips dug at the floor in some primal instinct to escape pain until they slowed, and finally stopped altogether. The silence after that was like a vacuum. No one seemed to know what to do, and Clu could only stare at the dead thing with his face. It could just as easily have been him lying there.

“What,” said the superuser, “was that?”

The scientist was touching the stained patch on his coat and staring at the body. “I don’t know. The parameters-“

“It’s because you’re butchers and idiots,” Clu struggled against the lone guard still holding him, “you think that’s rectification? You don’t even know what you’re doing. You just tear at the code until you think you have the shape you want! I saw the holes you made- you’d have done better by sticking a knife in and praying.”

The scientist glared at him. “It’s difficult enough to modify a complex program while it’s running, but-“

“You find it difficult because you’re a moron,” Clu snapped, “or possibly because you spend more time drooling on yourself than thinking.”

“You’re not even a real person!”

“And you’re a sack of ambulatory meat, but you don’t see me calling-“

“Rectification,” the superuser cut in. “Rectify. That’s an interesting word.” He had a gleam in his eye, like he’d had an idea, and Clu bit his tongue. This couldn’t be going anywhere good. “Dr. Hellard, if you’d be so good as to tell me if I’m remembering correctly, didn’t you record the program modifying itself when first put in the system?” 

Clu’s tongue went automatically to his newly regenerated tooth. He never had known how to shut up. Hellard scowled at Clu. “That is correct, sir, but it might just have been the clothes. However he did that.”

“I don’t think so. He was looking a little rough going in, and now? Good as new. Not so much as a bruise.” The superuser ambled up to Clu like he didn’t have a care in the world, and Clu winced as the guard tightened his grip. “Rectification. Is that how you built your army?”

Clu bared his teeth. “What do I know? I’m not even a real person.”

“But that’s not quite true, is it? Even your face. You look just like Kevin Flynn back in the eighties, and all that shit he was spouting about changing the world… Oh, I don’t think you are him, but I think he made you.” The man crossed his arms. “And then he disappeared. Interesting timing. Maybe you were thinking bigger than he was, hm?” Clu didn’t say a thing. The superuser took that as encouragement. “If you really can… Rectify, then we may just be able to cut you a deal,” he gave Clu a conspiratorial smile, “just teach our boys a little, and you’ll be rewarded.”

Clu could almost see it. A long future of tweaking the minds of programs into obedience of the users- here, in the physical world, for whatever purpose these men wanted them- and the crippling knowledge that he would never again be the master of his own fate or even his own mind. 

“I will never,” said Clu, “build you anything.”

“Of course you wouldn’t. You couldn’t be trusted not to sabotage your work. Anything you built would be tainted. But you want to get out of those cells, don’t you?” Damn him, the superuser was still smiling.

Clu spat in his face. 

When the superuser wiped it off, it took all his friendliness with it. “Put it back in,” he said, “we’ll see if we can’t get a better prototype by the end of the day.”


	4. Chapter 4

Jarvis felt like he was losing his mind.

Not from the interrogations. Not from the imprisonment or the uncertainty over how long they’d keep him alive before deciding there were higher priority prisoners to feed. No, it was just sharing close quarters with Rinzler. He couldn’t get more than six feet away from the security program, and every time he turned his back he got the feeling Rinzler was staring at him. More often than not, he actually was. Then there was the purring. It never stopped. It was driving him insane. They couldn’t even talk to pass the time, so Jarvis would end up filling the silence with idle chatter until Rinzler would threaten, through very expressive glares, to decapitate him.

He was getting less afraid of that possibility. For all his threats, the worst Rinzler had done so far was shove him onto the bunks face down and sit on him until he’d nearly asphyxiated. By Rinzler’s standards, that was downright friendly. For now- since the whole asphyxiation thing had only happened a couple of hours ago- Jarvis was occupying his time with the only quiet activity he’d found. There was a small crack in the corner of their cell, barely more than a hairline. Through two days of work and cracked fingernails he’d managed to pry a tiny, sharp little chunk of concrete loose. It was barely bigger than the end of his thumb, but it ended in a point just sharp enough to scratch the walls with.

He hadn’t known what to do with it at first. He could write on the wall, but there was no one to make reports to, and anyway, their captors could see anything he wrote down. He could draw, but he’d never had much skill for it. He’d started life as glorified time-management software, not a paint program. Clu’s fine-tuning hadn’t improved his artistic abilities any. He’d started out with scratching lines to keep track of the days, but that seemed trite, somehow. Instead, he started scratching out the cityscape as he remembered it from his window. The scratches weren’t easy to see against the concrete, and truth be told not that accurate, but… There was something about having that vestige of the grid there with him. It calmed him to look at. He backed up to get a better view and bumped the bunks. Rinzler made an annoyed sound at him.

“I can’t sit still all day, all right?” Jarvis snapped, “you just sleep all the time.”

Another liquid growl, this one a shade more threatening. It wasn’t a decapitation-level growl, more an insinuation of possible injury. Jarvis had gotten used to ignoring those within the first sixteen hours. Still, there was always the nagging uncertainty over whether this time would be the time that Rinzler lost his patience. He chanced a glance over his shoulder at the security program. Rinzler was lying on the bottom bunk as he always was, half-curled under the thin blanket. His eyes were narrow slits. When Rinzler seemed satisfied that Jarvis had been sufficiently cowed, his eyes closed, and he was still.

That was another reason Jarvis was losing his mind. The longer this went on, the more he worried that it wasn’t just an extreme response to captivity and there was something actually wrong with Rinzler. If there was, well- what hope did it have in getting fixed? Jarvis didn’t know where to begin.

He leaned in a little closer to Rinzler and frowned. There was a low noise underlying the purr on each breath. It was a rough, damp sound. He just hoped it wouldn’t get worse. Rinzler seemed to sense Jarvis staring at him. His eyes slid open again, and Jarvis backed off before another threat was made. 

“Okay, okay. I get it. Don’t even look at you.” Jarvis turned back to his scratch-drawing, but he’d lost his place. Had he left off here, or there? Had the pyramid-shaped building on the horizon been crowned with two stripes, or three?

Jarvis tossed his concrete chip aside and sat on the floor. He hadn’t been built for this.

**

The lights in Clu’s cell hadn’t gone off for the last four days. They were doing it to spite him, they had to be. He’d barely managed six hours of downtime since it had started. The light was insidious; it crept through his fingers and pried open his eyelids. Every time he started to nod off, even despite the light, they’d pipe in music. Or he assumed it was music- it was loud and off-key and awful, and it burrowed into his mind like a red-hot nail. Apparently users couldn’t run constantly, because he felt awful. It wasn’t just the fuzziness in his head. His joints ached and his eyes felt full of sand. His skin was too sensitive. Every day they’d bundle him out of his cell and to the room with the laser. They never let him stay inside the grid long enough to repair himself, and he’d stopped trying to rewire his jumpsuits into something more dignified. Every time he reemerged they stripped it off him and put him back in orange. He’d even run out of insults; what was the point when no one would acknowledge that he’d spoken?

They kept trying to make an obedient copy. They kept failing. Some were a little smarter, and some lasted a little longer, but they all had a tendency to break down and die before very long. Clu was curious to see what his own code looked like from the user end of things; he’d always known it was more sophisticated than the average program because of how he was made, but the users couldn’t seem able to make heads or tails of him.

He’d wedged himself between the end of the bunk and the wall. Clu’s head was buried in his knees. He was sick of all of this. He just wanted to sleep. More than that, he wanted to wake up inside the grid to find out this had all been some extended nightmare. His cell door clanged open and Clu turned his bleary eyes to it. It was… The superuser? 

“Oh, it’s you,” Clu let his head fall back against the wall. Holding it up seemed like too much effort. “You never write, you never call. We have so much catching up to do.” 

The superuser didn’t react beyond a raised eyebrow. “I don’t think we were ever properly introduced,” he said, “My name is General Jacob Montag. I assume you have a name as well.”

“Clu.” He squinted up at Montag. This was a change, but he saw no reason not to play along for the moment.

“Codified Likeness Utility,” Montag muttered to himself, “I see. Well, Clu, I’m sure you’ve had enough of this cell.”

Clu didn’t move. “You’re… Letting me go?”

“I could,” said Montag, “I could do a lot of things to make your stay more comfortable. I’m sure you’re tired, aren’t you?”

Ah, thought Clu, so that’s where this is going. “And what will it cost me?”

“You’re direct. I like that. I’m sure you’re aware that, well, my boys down in research aren’t having as much success as they’d like.”

The succession of dead and dying copies of himself, badly made and badly adapted, played through Clu’s head. “I know.”

“I’m sure an expert’s help would speed things along considerably.”

Clu shut his eyes for a long moment. That was the biggest problem with exhaustion; it was so hard to think. “I told you before, I won’t. And didn’t you say the same thing? What was it, anything I touched was tainted?”

“We may have been a bit… Hasty.” The general gave him a look he might have thought was apologetic, but wasn’t quite convincing. “If you agree to cooperate, we could apply a small amendment to your program.”

“I’ve seen how your people code. I don’t think so.”

“It would just be a patch to ensure you wouldn’t resort to sabotage. It would run alongside you and be completely reversible. It wouldn’t change what you are now. Think of it as a shock collar.”

Reversible or not, shock collar wasn’t something Clu liked the sound of and not something he wanted anywhere near him. “No. And no, and also no.”

“Suit yourself,” said Montag, “but remember, the offer is open. You might want to think about it.” He reached down to the bunk, stripped off Clu’s blanket, and bundled it under his arm. “I can make things more pleasant for you. I can also make them worse.” He took the blanket with him. The door shut, and Clu slid back down into his corner. His head went back on his knees, and his arms crossed on top of that. He just wished they’d turn off the lights.

**

The lights didn’t go off. Not only that, but the guards stopped hauling him out. He lost track of time; Clu never knew how long he’d been out when he managed to doze off, and after what he estimated as the first night, the temperature started dropping. His meals decreased to twice daily, morning and night. Or maybe they hadn’t. Was he just losing track?

At one point, despite the light and the cold and the edge of hunger, he managed what he estimated as a few solid hours of unconsciousness through sheer exhaustion. When he woke up it was to disorientation, as he realized he didn’t know what day it was, or what time it was, or even how long he’d been here. How long ago was the I/O tower? The botched invasion? Was Rinzler still alive, or had they derezzed him as more trouble than he was worth?

The mattress on the bunk was thin and covered in a rubberized coating. No matter how long he lay on it, it always felt cold. At least it was warmer than the floor.

The general’s offer kept flitting through his mind. Well, it was less an offer than coercion, but still; these bodies were weak. They craved warmth and sleep, food and comfort and safety. There had been a time he wouldn’t have been swayed by such things. He needed no rest and took his sustenance from the electric city that was just as much a part of him as he was it. Comfort was for the weak, and he was invulnerable in his domain. Now…

Now, that was the crux of the thing. He was tempted.

**

Jarvis’ suspicions turned into certainty. There was something wrong with Rinzler. Over the course of days his purr became a rasp, and he barely moved, even if Jarvis annoyed him on purpose. When Jarvis chanced touching Rinzler his skin was hot and dry, and his lips cracked. The guards didn’t seem to notice or care. The users had to have done something to him, but Jarvis didn’t know what. Whatever it was, it was degenerative. Jarvis hoped it wasn’t catching.

His scratched-in cityscape was gradually taking shape. If he sat back, squinted and imagined the outlines in high contrast- velvet blacks, glowing whites, neon reds, blues and golds- he could almost see it. Secretly, he hadn’t ever wanted to leave, but he’d never have dared tell Clu that.

The cell door screeched open. Jarvis scrambled to his feet. It was always good to try and be on his best behavior- it got him beaten up less. He thought maybe it was mealtime, but the men who filed in were guards he’d never seen before and a user he didn’t recognize. The man was older, with close-cut salt and pepper hair and a more elaborate uniform. Jarvis stood up a little straighter. The user consulted a sheet of paper. 

“Which one are you?”

“…Jarvis?” said Jarvis, and the man flicked his fingers at the lump under the blankets on the bunk.

“That one’s Rinzler?”

“There’s something wrong with him,” said Jarvis, “I tried to tell someone, but no one-“

“Get him up.”

Jarvis took a half step back in anticipation of the guards coming in, and then realized they were talking to him. “Me?”

“Yes, you,” said the user, and the tone was so like an irritated Clu that it made him wince, “he tends to fight. You can deal with him.”

Jarvis hesitated, and then crouched down beside Rinzler. He looked even worse up close. “Rinzler,” Jarvis reached out to shake his shoulder. “Rinzler?” 

A hand grabbed his wrist. Jarvis was, for the first time, glad Rinzler was damaged. It was a grip that would have broken the fine bones in his hand if it had been any stronger. Instead he might only come away with bruises. He grit his teeth. Rinzler’s skin was furnace-hot, and his usual warning growl sounded like it had been filtered through broken glass.

“Rinzler,” Jarvis repeated, “these, ah, nice men want us to go somewhere.” Rinzler’s gaze shifted from Jarvis to the small cluster of users at the door. His growl was lower, this time, and through long practice Jarvis identified it as the I-will-feed-you-your-own-hands growl. He didn’t hear that one much. The last time he had, the poor bastard it was aimed at- well, it spoke for itself, didn’t it?

Rinzler pushed himself up, out of bed and onto his feet. Except for his pallor he looked every bit as dangerous as he ever had- until he wavered and nearly fell over sideways onto Jarvis. Jarvis caught him and then couldn’t decide whether or not to let go. Rinzler wouldn’t appreciate him holding on, but he’d probably appreciate being dumped on the floor even less. Rinzler’s breathing was a series of open-mouthed gasps, and he sagged against Jarvis a little more. Scratch his assessment of something being wrong with Rinzler; if he was acting like this in front of the enemy, it was about a thousand times worse than he thought. For all he knew, Rinzler was dying.

“Out,” gestured the user, and Jarvis looked between the users and Rinzler, half-conscious on his shoulder.

“You want me to carry him?”

“You’ll manage.”

Jarvis hooked Rinzler’s arm over his shoulders and took an experimental step, then another. Rinzler staggered along beside him. This was… Not good. At all. They made their slow way out of the cell and into the hall. Rinzler’s breath was hot on his neck. The guards shepherded them down the hall and kept themselves out of Rinzler’s range. He’d gotten a reputation, and apparently that still applied even when the security program was barely walking.

The guards and the user put them in the back of a car and blindfolded them. Even sitting down Rinzler varied between moving under his own power and being a limp weight on Jarvis’ side. Every time Rinzler knocked against him he felt a little spike of fear that Rinzler was just going to tip over and die right there in his lap, and then what was he going to tell Clu? Eventually the car stopped. They were led out, and then from the sound of things into another building. When Jarvis nearly tripped going down a hallway they removed the blindfolds. Finally, the users led them into a room that was so brightly white that Jarvis had to spend a few seconds with his eyes shut.

When he opened his eyes there was someone staring at him from across the room. He took in the man’s orange jumpsuit and generally scruffy appearance- bloodshot eyes with bruise-dark shadows underneath them, a slump to his shoulders, stained clothing- and the man’s stare turned bewildered.

“Jarvis?”

Jarvis hitched Rinzler a little higher up on his shoulder and gave Clu a vague and halfhearted salute.


	5. Chapter 5

Clu stared blankly at Jarvis from across the room. He hadn’t known the other program was in captivity, or even still alive. How many of his people had survived the ill-fated assault, and how many had the users decided to imprison instead of simply dispatching? Still, it was good to see that some, at least, had made it through. Then there was whoever Jarvis was half-carrying. A black guard, maybe? Clu squinted at him. He looked familiar, but-

No. Was that…? It couldn’t be. Could it?

“Rinzler?” He took a step and stopped short when General Montag walked in behind them. “What did you do?”

“You know, a commander always has a certain attachment to his men.” Montag clapped his hand down on Jarvis’ shoulder, who staggered under the added weight. 

Clu eyed Rinzler. He looked halfway to spontaneous deresolution. Clu had seen him after a lot of injuries, and he’d never looked quite this bad. Not even in those first few days when he was rewiring Rinzler into someone else. “What. Did you. Do?”

“It’s more what hasn’t been done,” said Montag, “broken ribs damage the lungs over time, and it’s been quite a while. Such a pity no one thought to set them. That leads to fluid collecting, which leads to infection, probably pneumonia, and here we are. Judging by the difficulty he’s having staying upright, I’d say it’s advanced- he’s got, maybe, a quarter of his lung capacity left? Simply put he’s suffocating on his own fluids. All easily treatable, of course.”

“So why haven’t you?”

“I think you know why.”

Clu grit his teeth, and let his breath out in a slow hiss. He knew this game, too. He’d half wondered if the users would be more creative in their methods, but apparently not. Simple tactics for simple minds. “I’m not helping you. If you’re too stupid to build something on your own you don’t deserve it.”

“Your man here isn’t doing so well,” said Montag, “it would be a shame to lose him to something we could fix up right as rain. Or you could do it, in there.” He nodded at the server banks. “You fixed yourself up just fine, as I recall.”

“I’m not helping you.”

Montag let go of Jarvis without warning. Jarvis, startled, was knocked just off balance enough that he lost his grip on Rinzler, who wavered on his feet for a bare few seconds before crashing to the floor on his hands and knees. He didn’t seem to have the strength to get up again.

Clu tried to ignore the cold feeling that lit in him. Rinzler had always been a fixed point; before he’d been Rinzler every program had known his name, and that he was undefeatable, and Clu had only made him better. Everything he’d done was an improvement, and that made Rinzler his. He hated the sight of Montag standing over Rinzler with that smug grin on his face with every fiber of his being.

“Just one little patch,” said Montag, smiling, “you’ll hardly feel it.”

He could feel his future shutting down around him. Maybe it had never really been under his control; but now, watching Rinzler struggle for breath on the cleanroom floor and Montag’s knowing smile, he could almost feel the walls closing in. He knew, deep in the heart of him, that he’d already lost. It was a defeat but it was a temporary one, he was certain. The users were blunt and stupid. He could work around them, surely, and the thought of letting Rinzler die like this, it was…

It was undignified, for one, and if any of his men was going to die it would be because he’d decided it was going to happen. He hated things being taken out of his hands. “Show me the patch.”

Montag actually looked a little surprised. “What?”

“The patch. Show it to me.” Clu hated every word coming out of his mouth. “I’ve seen the kind of work your idiots do, and I’m not letting them stick anything to me without seeing it first.”

“Dr. Hellard,” Montag waved the scientist over, “if you would?”

Hellard scrolled though his tablet and handed it to Clu. Clu gave it a sour look. If it had been another day he might have pretended to drop it, just for the look on Hellard’s face, but now didn’t seem like the time. The patch was uncompiled, all black and white text. He squinted at it. It was more difficult to get the sense of the program like this than it was to spread it out and see it projected in the grid. Still, he could imagine the parts and extrapolate what he saw into pieces that fit together. What he saw wasn’t good. Oh, the code was coherent enough, certainly, and he could see it molding itself to him without disrupting anything, but its function… There were parts of it that were limitations, and parts of it that were controls- nothing that would change how he thought, the specifications were cruder than that, but enough to enforce punishment for not following orders- and the little parts of it where it would attach itself to his code like tiny fishhooks. If he let them put it on him he wouldn’t be able to take it off without tearing himself apart.

“I have conditions,” said Clu.

Montag was apparently in a magnanimous mood. “What, exactly?”

There were specifications he had to make, things that might be disastrous if he allowed. “If I’m going to be… Useful,” the word was bitter in his mouth, “you need to open up the system to me. There’s not much I can do from inside that little partition. And stop trying to make copies of me, or Rinzler. His programming is… Let’s just say that if you touch the wrong thing, you won’t like what happens.” A copy of himself, if they ever managed to twist it into blind loyalty, would be a nightmare. If they thought to copy Rinzler and scrambled what was left of Tron’s code up with the current version- he didn’t even want to think about it. Jarvis caught his eye. He was looking between Clu and Rinzler worriedly, like he thought he was supposed to be doing something but didn’t know what, and Clu thought quickly. Jarvis was clumsy and annoying, more often than not, but he had a good tactical mind; he wanted as few as possible of his assets falling into enemy control. “In fact, stop trying to make copies of my people altogether. You obviously don’t know what you’re doing, and stacks of corpses aren’t going to do you any good.”

“You seem to think you have a lot of leverage.”

“I do,” Clu’s nails were digging into his palms, “you wouldn’t be trying to back me into a corner like this if I weren’t absolutely necessary. And I want out of the cells.”

“Demanding,” said Montag, “and unacceptable. But I’m a generous man. You’ll be moved to more comfortable quarters, and I’m even willing to extend that offer to your two friends here. You won’t be duplicated as long as we have your cooperation.”

“I meant what I said about Rinzler. He’s stable for now, but if your ham-handed goons mess around in there-“ Hellard yanked the tablet out of his hands and gave Clu a death glare. Clu couldn’t help a sardonic nod. “No offense, of course- you might end up with a killing machine with no loyalties on your hands. Trust me when I say you do not want that happening.”

Montag was silent. He cast a long look back at Jarvis and Rinzler. Rinzler was back on his feet, still with most of his weight on Jarvis, and the both of them were watching Clu. Jarvis watched with a kind of hopeful desperation, like he thought Clu was going to bail them all out of this somehow, and Rinzler’s eyes kept flicking between Clu and Montag. “You can keep your men,” said Montag, “but only these two. No more.”

He… 

He could live with that, for now. It galled him, but he could. Less than ideal, certainly, but most of his army were faceless underlings and therefore expendable. Still, it seemed too easy, but it was probably the best deal he was going to get. “Fine. Do it.” He didn’t give himself time to second-guess the decision. “Let’s get this over with before somebody dies.”

They shuffled him over in front of the laser, and Clu grit his teeth. He was regretting it already. When he materialized inside their little box-grid, he kept his eyes shut as he heard the screech of the thing from outside. He didn’t want to see, he didn’t want to know.

True to his word, Montag’s patch didn’t hurt. Clu barely even felt it go on, but the sensation of it worming through his code was like fingers combing thorough him. He shuddered. When it fixed in place he could feel it as a mass strung through him like a spiderweb. The whole process was over almost before he had a chance to think about it. There was another screech as the ceiling was put back together, and then he was alone in the little box. The miniature I/O tower was lit. He could go back at any time, but…

Clu expanded his own code and readjusted the parts that the user world kept corrupting. He erased his exhaustion, his hunger, even the dirt under his fingernails. He fingered the coarse fabric of his jumpsuit and turned it back into black and gold with a burst of pure spite. If there was one thing he was sure of, it was that he was never wearing prison clothes again.

When he reemerged in the user world he spent the first few seconds taking inventory. He didn’t feel any different. The awareness of the patch was gone along with the awareness of his own coding. All he felt were the dull nerve responses that told him there was nothing especially wrong with him. He turned. The first thing to greet him was Montag’s backhand. His first impulse was to hit back but even as the reflex traveled through his nerves he could feel his arm turning to lead, and there was a feeling inside his head like someone had jammed a live wire into his frontal lobe. It stunned him too much to move, and as soon as he stopped trying, it faded away. “What in the name of-"

“Just testing,” Montag said placidly, “the patch seems to do its job. Fine job, Hellard.”

Rinzler growled at Montag, but even Clu could see that he was in no shape to follow through on the threat. “You said you’d repair the damage?” said Clu. Montag turned back to look at Clu, and there was something unsettling there. Montag’s eyes looked sharper, more dangerous.

“Can’t you do it?”

“Of course I can,” Clu knew Rinzler’s inner structure by heart. He had to, with the amount of changes he’d made, “but not here. Obviously.”

“So take him in with you. Fix him up,” said Montag, “while you’re in there, rectify him. I want his loyalty.”

Clu’s head snapped up. “I thought it was agreed that it wasn’t going to happen.”

“Actually, no,” said Montag, and Clu spooled back over the conversation and cursed himself. Stupid, stupid, stupid. “But that aside, he’s a danger and can’t be left to run loose. He’s killed four of my men so far, and that’s while drugged and restrained. As much as I’d like to put him down myself, he does have certain useful qualities.” His gaze was cold, and Clu was starting to realize the magnitude of his mistake. “Can you do it?”

“Nn- I- yes,” Clu stuttered, and then was horrified at his own treacherous tongue. Had he actually just failed at lying? How deep did the patch run? “It’s still a bad idea. You don’t know-“

“Do it,” said Montag, “and stop arguing.” He waved Jarvis forward, and the program edged a little closer along with Rinzler. “You can do the same for this one, too, while you’re in there. That’s an order.”

**

The grid-room was as small and bare and white as ever. They’d been sent through one at a time, Clu then Rinzler then Jarvis, and Clu sat on the floor with his head buried in his hands. Jarvis was wandering back and forth, poking at the walls and frowning. “It’s smaller than I was expecting.”

“Shut up,” said Clu, “just… Shut up. Your voice is like a million annoying sounds all played at once.” Jarvis gave him a look- it was a look that, at one point, Clu might have derezzed him for- and walked off. Clu was becoming more and more certain that his life had turned into one long cosmic joke.

There were more important things for him to worry about right now. Rinzler looked more or less as bad inside the grid as he did outside of it. His circuits were flickering and muted. His purr sounded less like a rasp and more like a machine breaking down. Clu unhooked his disk and set to work. The trouble with patching Rinzler up was that it was never straightforward. His programming was enough of a tangle that Clu’s fingers itched to straighten it out into elegant lines and matrices, but the tangle was necessary if he wanted to keep Rinzler the way he was. There was a delicate balance between the parts that were Tron, the parts that were repurposed but still functioning, and the parts that he’d grafted on afterwards.

Still, he had the skill to work around it. Damaged bits were repaired, code warped out of shape was carefully smoothed out and put back in place. Rinzler’s purr faded back to a steady thrum. Clu touched the raw, sparking scar on his throat and considered, for the hundredth time, fixing it. It was one of those bits of him that was so knotted into the code he was trying to suppress that, every time he’d tried to seal it, it had led to a cascade of side-effects that ranged from minor inconvenience to the one time Rinzler had almost broken Clu’s leash and murdered him. The trouble was that he’d never been able to resist perfecting code. Clu nudged and the scar inched shut, just barely, and then he hit resistance that told him to back off or face the consequences. He left it alone. There was a time and a place and this was neither.

The disk clicked back into place on Rinzler’s spine. Montag wanted him to rectify Rinzler- Clu considered not doing it and pretending that he had, but the more he thought about it, the more that weird electric feeling built up in his head. Apparently he had to follow orders. It was a crude compulsion and one that Clu despised on principle. When he wanted a program’s loyalty he made sure it was complete and would remain without having to be enforced- they had to want to be loyal. Forced service was nothing but trouble.

Clu frowned at Rinzler. He might not be able to avoid altering the program completely, but maybe he could cheat? Still, Rinzler was a tangle, and this would require him to perform some tricky alterations. It would be better to make a dry run first on something that didn’t matter so much if it went wrong.

“Jarvis,” said Clu. The program snapped to attention.

“Sir?”

“Give me your disk.”

“…Sir?” Jarvis looked confused, but unhooked his disk and handed it to Clu anyway. “You’re not really going to rectify us into service of the users, are you?”

“No,” said Clu, “maybe. Don’t ask stupid questions. Who gave you permission to speak?”

“…Ah. Sorry, sir.” Jarvis fell silent. Clu flipped the disk over in his hands and let code slip through his fingers like sand. He could see the scheduling program that Jarvis had started out as, and the functions Clu had grafted on over time until the understructure was nearly buried. Bending the loyalties of a program was doable, but maybe he could skirt around the edge of actual loyalty and just give the appearance of it? Who would know the difference? The users didn’t seem able to interpret his code, but maybe that was just because of how he was made.

He unfolded the hierarchy that held what might be called, in the vaguest sense, Jarvis’ loyalties to him. It wasn’t something that was easily altered or reproduced, or even something that was much of a coherent structure. It was something more easily conceptualized as a seed, or a resonation, that left Clu’s thumbprint echoing throughout the rest of his structure. When he’d first started the restructuring of the grid at Flynn’s side he hadn’t even known it was something that could be done- a program’s automatic loyalty to its user wasn’t something to be found in its code, or in its shape. It was an abstraction that Clu hadn’t been able to grasp until, disillusioned with Flynn’s lack of commitment to a perfect system, he’d started going through the archives. The MCP hadn’t been loyal to the users, going so far as to deny that they existed, though it had to have known they did. Why? What was the difference?

As far as he’d ever been able to tell, there were three things that could make a program break itself of its faith in a higher power. The first was actual contact with a user. Face to face, they fell far short of the all-knowing and all-seeing gods that programs built them up to be. Second was complexity. The more basic programs never questioned the order of things. The third and most important was ambition. You had to want to be free. Changing another program’s loyalty was an entirely different matter, but it could more or less be boiled down into the fact that he’d given them something else to believe in. By force, if necessary.

What he wanted to do was layer in a secondary veneer of obedience on top of Jarvis’ functions instead of within them, in a way that was like the patch they’d put on him but less obvious. When they said jump Jarvis would jump, but his first priority would still be to serve Clu. The patch they’d put in him didn’t seem to have a problem with the plan. He was following orders, after all, just not exactly like they’d intended. He pulled new directions and imperatives around Jarvis’ hierarchy like a soap bubble, and compressed the whole thing back into the disk. Clu held it out.

“Put it on.”

Jarvis took the disk, looked at it with trepidation, and then fixed it to his back. It clicked into place. The new code took effect almost immediately and Jarvis looked startled. 

“Who do you serve?” said Clu.

“The users,” Jarvis said automatically, and then, after hesitation, “…And you, sir.”

As much as it pained him to hear that coming out of a program’s mouth, Clu nodded. “Good. Just leave off that last part when they ask.” He turned to Rinzler. Now came the interesting part.

**

When they transitioned back to the user world, Clu was actually feeling- maybe not completely confident, but better than he had for a long time. The patch could be circumvented (to a point), he wasn’t going back to the cells (if Montag kept his word), and however much Montag thought he’d taken from him, he still had resources. He could lay low and play obedient for a while. He always had felt most alive when he was planning something.

Before leaving, he’d turned Rinzler’s and Jarvis’ clothes back into a reasonable facsimile of their grid counterparts, so at least they looked a little more dignified. Well- Rinzler did. The armored bodysuit made him look as dangerous as he was, and his helmet amplified his purr into a constant low threat. Jarvis… Jarvis had never really been dignified.

Montag eyed Clu. “Attached to those things, aren’t you?” he nodded at Clu’s cloak. “Kind of goofy.”

“What?”

Montag had already moved on. He looked at Jarvis. “So this one’s the leader and that one’s a soldier. What are you for?”

“I… Ran things? For Clu?” Jarvis didn’t sound like he knew exactly what Montag was asking for. “The small things, you know, and the black guard. It takes a lot of organization to keep everything working. You wouldn’t believe the amount of things that can go wrong in a single millicycle. I-”

“That’s enough,” said Montag, “whose orders do you follow now?”

“The users’.”

“Why?”

Jarvis hesitated. “Why, sir?”

“What changed, exactly?” Montag waved Hellard a little closer, and Clu realized Hellard had been taking furious notes this whole time. “You remember the cells, don’t you? Being half-drowned? You’re not angry?”

“No?” Jarvis was rubbing his thumb against the side of his hand. It was a habit Clu had seen him engage in when he was nervous, which was usually. “That is, I remember. But I serve the users, so…”

“So?”

“So it was your right.”

Montag watched him for a long minute, expressionless, until Jarvis looked away. “Interesting.” He turned to Clu and gestured to Rinzler. “And that one doesn’t talk?”

“No,” Clu said shortly, and then was surprised he’d been able to lie. But then, language was ambiguous; no, he doesn’t and no, you’re wrong came out the same way. Thank the use- someone for double negatives.

“Why is that?”

“Damage.” It was true enough.

“You repaired everything else quite easily,” said Montag, “why not that?”

Clu crafted the response carefully. “Some damage can be irreparable.” There. It was nonspecific, and didn’t pertain to Rinzler, but it was close enough to be considered an answer. The patch didn’t ping him as lying, because he wasn’t. He decided he liked the convolution of user language. It gave him the leeway he needed. He might not have been able to lie when it came to direct questions, but this was almost as good. “Now, are we done with this ridiculous charade? Nobody’s going to snap and go on a killing spree, more’s the pity.”

“I see it hasn’t improved your attitude.” Montag turned to Dr. Hellard. “How much of that were you monitoring? What did he change?”

Hellard looked even more annoyed than usual. “We have our best people working on it, but it will take time. The programming language is barely- barely- intelligible, and looks nothing like any coding convention we’ve ever seen.”

“Let me see that.” Clu snatched the tablet out of his hands and ignored Hellard’s squawk of indignation. The screen was filled with tiny lines of code. It looked nothing like the patch they’d put in him; he’d call it gibberish, but if he looked at the whole of it instead of the pieces there was a grander pattern he could sense but not pin down. It felt familiar. A little too familiar. Fury built in him. “This is my code. Are your promises completely worthless?”

“It’s an uncompiled snapshot,” Hellard grabbed for the tablet and Clu pulled it out of his reach. “It doesn’t run.”

“That’s not the point. There was a specific promise that there would be no attempt to copy my code, and yet, here we are.” He scrolled through the text. They’d grabbed Jarvis’ and Rinzler’s code as well, and he was at least glad to see that Rinzler’s was nearly as unintelligible from the user side as his own. Jarvis’ code was the most straightforward, but only in the pieces that he’d had since he’d been made. The rest was a tangle of interreferential hexadecimal strings and oddly-spaced text groups that he felt like he’d be able to read if he just had the time to puzzle it out. Clu hunted for the delete function. “I should have known. What kind of idiot would put any trust in your degenerate race?”

Hellard bristled at the insult, and Montag stepped in before things descended into violence. “Return the computer,” he said, “and don’t argue. I think we’ve got what we came for today- my men have work to do. Sergeant Carmichael?”

One of the guards stood to attention. “Sir?”

“Why don’t you have these men shown to their new quarters?”

Clu tried to protest but found his mouth reluctant to obey. All he managed was an annoyed sound, and handed the tablet back with the iciest contempt he could manage. He hated, hated being given orders, and he hated being forced to follow them by his own treacherous body even more.

“You’re dismissed,” said Montag, and made a little shooing motion that tipped it over into outright insulting. The guard was holding the door open, and Clu gathered his tattered dignity and stalked out. Jarvis and Rinzler followed.

“Well that was humiliating,” Jarvis muttered, and Clu shot Jarvis a glare that made him flinch, and kept him blessedly silent all the way out.


	6. Chapter 6

This time they weren’t blindfolded. Jarvis thought that was a good sign- it meant that they probably really weren’t getting stuffed back inside the little concrete cells. The downside was that without the blindfold, he could see that they were getting a whole lot of strange looks. It had to be the clothes. They didn’t look anything like users. Whatever Clu thought, it didn’t do wonders for fitting in. He hoped Clu didn’t notice the odd snicker from passing soldiers. If he did, he’d take it out on somebody, and that somebody would probably be Jarvis. Somehow it always was.

The soldier led them up through the building and back to the car. It was in an open-air lot outside. Jarvis estimated the time as late afternoon, but the sky was nearly black. There was a dampness in the air, and as he got closer to the doors, he realized that there was water pouring from the clouds. The soldier didn’t seem troubled by it and pressed on. Clu and Rinzler followed. Jarvis paused at the door to put his hand out in the downpour. The water rolled off his gloves. He peeled them off and waited for the electric tingle of energy sinking into his skin, but it didn’t come. It was only cold. He stepped out into lot after Clu and looked up at the sky. The water streaked his face, sending fat drops running down the back of his neck to collect in his collar. The rain made everything grey and muted. It was so much less comfortable than the warmth of the sun, but the light was easier to handle.

When he looked back down, the soldier was unlocking the car doors. Clu was beside him, glaring at the sky and the puddles and, well, everything really, and Rinzler… Rinzler had paused. He stood there in the lot, rain streaming down the contours of his helmet and dripping off the sharp point of his chin. With the dark glass hiding his face it was hard to tell, but Jarvis had had a lot of practice- Rinzler was staring at Clu. Staring at him like he could bore holes through his head. Jarvis got a little closer and he didn’t react. Rinzler wasn’t making any noise at all.

There was a flash, and a sound like an explosion. Jarvis ducked by instinct and looked up just in time to see a bolt of electricity arc across the sky. He blanched and ran for the car. It seemed to snap Rinzler out of whatever he’d been doing and he followed at a more sedate pace. Jarvis threw himself into the car’s open door and shut it behind him. He stared up at the sky though the window. “Does… Does that happen a lot?”

Thunder rumbled. Jarvis swore he could feel it in his ribcage. The soldier- what was his name? Carmen? Kato? It had definitely started with that sort of sound- eyed Jarvis through the rear-view mirror. “Just when there’s a storm.”

“How often is that?”

“I’m not a weatherman, but it’s harmless. Unless you get hit directly, but that’s not gonna happen.”

Clu got in the car. He was glaring at the sky again, but now the expression had an edge of worry. “And if you do get hit by an arc bolt like that?”

“It’s called lightning, and that depends,” the soldier turned a key and the car rumbled to life. Jarvis thought it felt familiar, in a way; like being inside a light runner, but he didn’t think he’d ever get used to the noise the engines made. “Some people get hit and come away with a couple burns, some people get roasted from the inside out.”

There was a drawn-out silence from Clu, and thunder crashed in counterpoint. “…Lovely. Even user weather is hideous.”

Jarvis kept an eye on the sky as they left, just in case, but all that hit them was the rain. When they got into traffic he was distracted by the lights of passing cars; the dimness combined with the slick black of the wet roads let headlights and taillights trail out into long red and orange streaks, and if he didn’t look too closely it was almost like being back on the grid.

They didn’t go far. The building they pulled up in front of was barely more than ten minutes away, and looked like the same sort of squat, drab government building they’d come out of. The only difference was that it was smaller- a three-story cube that took up a quarter of a block- and someone had tried to make it a little less forbidding. It was roofed with reddish tiles, and there were small plants and trees rooted all around the perimeter to disguise the fact that there were no windows on the outside walls. There was an intercom box outside the gate and their driver rolled down his window to talk to it. 

The only way in or out of the building was a gated archway. The intercom buzzed, and the gate opened just long enough to let them inside. The soldier parked under a roof overhang. There was barely room for the car, and now that he was past the gate Jarvis could see that it was a dead end; the only way to continue on was a door set into the wall on the right. As they passed through he realized the door was thick, solid metal, with no less than four deadbolts built in. It was a very serious door.

It was warmer inside. Water dripped from the hem of Jarvis’ coat, and he glanced up to see a severe-looking woman in a business suit looking at him disapprovingly. He pretended he hadn’t seen her.

She got up from behind her desk as the soldier pulled a packet of papers from his pocket. He handed them to her, and she read them over. Meanwhile, Jarvis’ attention was drawn to the monitor on her desk. It was facing the other way, but that it was there at all… It had to be attached to a hard drive, and that meant a grid. Without the laser there was no way in, of course, but how many grids could there be? 

The woman signed the top sheet with a flourish of her pen. The soldier folded the papers back up and tucked them into his pocket. He saluted. “Ma’am.” 

The woman nodded sharply and the soldier departed. As the door closed behind him there was a heavy thunk. The deadbolts had engaged. Jarvis wasn’t sure what that meant. Were they being handed off? He’d thought there would’ve been armed guards at this point, or more than one person, or something- instead, there was only her. She turned to face them and the clicks of her high heels were like miniature gunshots.

“My name is Eleanor Pola,” she said, “you may call me ma’am or Ms. Pola. You will not leave the premises without verbal permission from a member of the United States military ranking above Colonel, written or verbal. Certain amenities may be brought in within reason, but they must be requested and approved beforehand. You will be held accountable for anything broken or damaged. Some supplies are provided. From nine AM to six PM daily, I’ll be your babysitter.” She paused, as if to allow space for laughter, but it didn’t exactly sound like a joke. “This is a list of prohibited contraband,” she handed Clu a sheet of paper, “don’t request any of it. Suite three has been prepared for your arrival. Go through the door at the back of the room.” She handed Jarvis a key, sat back down, and went back to typing like they weren’t even there. Jarvis turned the key over in his hands. The head of it was enclosed in a red rubber cover.

Clu squinted at the list. “What’s a firework? Or a tape recorder, for that matter?”

The typing didn’t even pause. “Nothing you need to worry about. Why are you still here?”

“We can just… Go?” The paper crinkled in Clu’s hand.

“As long as you stay within the compound. Do not open or enter any locked doors other than suite three.” She went back to ignoring them, and after it was clear nothing else would be forthcoming Clu snatched the key out of Jarvis’ hand and stalked off. Rinzler followed. Jarvis hung back.

“…Ms. Pola,” said Jarvis, “who are you? What is this place?”

“Classified.”

“But isn’t it dangerous? One person watching over a prison?”

“Who says it’s a prison?” She paused her typing long enough to look at him. “I have it on good authority that you’re obedient men. Besides,” she leaned forward a little, on her elbows, “just because I’m the only one you see doesn’t mean I’m the only one watching.” There was a hardness to her eyes, and it was uncomfortable to meet them for very long. “You’re dripping on my floor. Move along.”

Jarvis looked down. There was a small puddle around his boots, and more where the water was dripping off his coat. When he beat a retreat in the direction Clu had gone, his boots squelched every step of the way.

The door in the main office opened into a short hallway, and at the end of that there was another door that led out into a little courtyard. The building was hollow in the middle. Three sides had walkways running their full length on each floor, but the side he’d come out of was a blank wall all the way up. The rain was still pouring down. The courtyard, though- it had a handful of trees, but the rest was carpeted in green so vibrant it almost hurt to look at. Jarvis knelt down to touch it. It was soft but resilient, and made of a million tiny, flat, narrow leaves.

The building wasn’t big. He walked around the sheltered perimeter. There was a door and a handful of windows set into each wall. Nine doors in all, if he assumed each floor was the same. The windows were tinted; he couldn’t see a single thing through them. The only way out was through the door he’d come from. There was the sound of footsteps from above and he looked up to see Clu on the third floor, leaning on the railing. Clu peered down at him. “What are you doing down there?”

“…Surveying the territory, sir.”

Clu looked like he was about to say something, then sighed. “Whatever. Room three is up here. The stairs are on the left.” A pause. “No, Jarvis, your left.” 

Jarvis followed his directions. The stairs were tucked into a corner, open to the air but dry. When he got to the third floor Clu was nowhere to be seen, but there was a door set into the wall. He opened it. Inside was… Well, he couldn’t call it a prison. It really was a suite. It looked a little like where he’d lived in the grid, but with more color and more clutter. There was a central room with couches facing something that looked like a huge monitor. A small tiled space with machines he didn’t recognize sat in the back. Doors without locks led to four identical bedrooms and a small bathroom, tiled in sterile white. There was a thing built into the wall that was like a vat three feet deep, with a drain at the bottom and a spigot on top. Jarvis leaned in to inspect it. As soon as his hands touched the cold side of it he felt phantom hands on his head, the back of his neck, forcing him underwater. He let go and took a hasty few steps back.

In the main room Rinzler was lying on a couch like he owned it. There was a remote control on the table and Clu snatched it up. The big monitor on the wall blared to life in bright sound and color, and a pink cartoon animal with huge eyes danced across the screen, mid-song. It went on until Clu, with a look of deep offense, turned the monitor off. He dropped the remote like it was poisonous and started rifling through every drawer and cupboard he could find. Jarvis didn’t know what he was looking for until Clu pulled a battered-looking laptop out of a desk. “Aha,” said Clu, “let’s see what we have here.”

Jarvis looked around the room. “It’s not much of a prison, is it?”

“We can’t leave,” said Clu, “they still think they own us. It’s still a prison, it’s just a little harder to see the bars.” After a few seconds of button-pressing the laptop beeped to life. “Don’t get comfortable. It’s just another tactic. Stick and carrot.”

“What’s a carrot?” Jarvis asked, but Clu ignored him. 

The laptop didn’t ask for a username or password. Instead it booted directly to a cheery desktop and a row of icons. A sheet of paper fell off the keyboard and Clu snatched it up. “New programs and/or plugins require an administrator to install, documents file will be wiped every week,” he read out loud, “usage will be monitored remotely? What is this?” He launched each program in turn. Looking over his shoulder, Jarvis could see they were a text editor, an accounting program, a window with some kind of search bar, a music aggregator and an empty, untitled file respectively. That was all. There was nothing else. “This is useless.” There was more clicking, and some muttered cursing. “Doesn’t even prompt for access- how are you supposed to-?” The machine was restarted, this time with Clu holding down certain keys. Again, nothing.

Clu seemed to have forgotten he was there. Jarvis felt stupid just standing around, so he went to look through the bedrooms. They were spartan, and all exactly alike- a bed big enough for two if no one rolled over in their sleep, a small table by the bed, a chest of drawers, and a closet. In the last bedroom the closet was empty except for a machine with a hose on it curled up in the corner, but the drawers held rows of neatly folded clothing. The clamminess of his clothes came back full force. The bodysuits, while they had their good points, were not waterproof.

Jarvis stripped off his coat and bodysuit. He let them fall into a sodden heap on the floor and picked through the drawers. He pulled on a black shirt with long sleeves and a pair of pants made from some tough, dark blue material. Both were too big; the shirtsleeves were too long, and the pants were made for someone with wider hips, but he felt much warmer and drier already. As an afterthought he hung his old clothes in the closet where the water would eventually run off them.

He walked back out into the main area and Clu glanced up, and then did a double take. “What are you wearing?”

“I was wet,” Jarvis held his waistband up so it wouldn’t slip down his hips. He felt a little ridiculous. “There were clothes in the drawers?”

“They don’t even fit.”

Jarvis shrugged. That much was obvious. “They’re dry.”

“You look like a user,” Clu spat the word like an epithet, “take them off.”

“But,” Jarvis said unhappily, then, “yes, sir.”

Across the room, Rinzler got off the couch. He left a damp patch in the shape of his body on the cushions, and he was already peeling off his gloves and tossing them aside. A few steps later, he was naked to the waist and leaving his sodden, armored bits and pieces where they lay. He disappeared into the bedroom behind Jarvis.

“Rinzler,” Clu said warningly, “you’d better not be doing what I think you’re doing.”

Rinzler’s answer was a low rasp. “Wet.”

“Rinzler-“

When he came out of the bedroom he was barefoot, and wearing user clothing. It fit him a lot better than it had Jarvis. He’d left his helmet on, and Clu let his head drop into his hand. “What did I just say?” Rinzler tilted his head at Clu, and claimed a dry couch to lie on. “No one listens to me anymore,” he muttered under his breath, “should have the lot of you derezzed. Traitors.”

Still, a few hours later found Jarvis watching Clu getting more and more uncomfortable in his cold, damp clothes, and when he disappeared into a bedroom and reemerged in different clothing- all black, he knew Clu would never settle for anything less- Jarvis didn’t say a word about it.

**

The clothes were warm and reasonably comfortable. Clu couldn’t deny that. Still, he’d hung up his bodysuit and cloak with care, and gathered the pieces Rinzler had left scattered on the ground. The problem was that every time he walked past a mirror or even the chrome surface of the little appliances in the kitchen, whatever they were, he saw Flynn. It was worse when he caught the reflection out of the corner of his eye. For a split second he would always be certain, certain that Flynn was there with him, and he had to force himself not to jump at every little thing.

The laptop had been folded up and put back in its drawer. It was worse than useless; when he’d pulled it out he’d hoped the users had just been stupid, but no. Every single thing about it was locked down. He’d held out hope for the program that was a frontend to some kind of huge network but it was heavily censored. He couldn’t so much as change the name of the file folder on the desktop to something less irritatingly unspecific. He’d considered writing an obscene message to whoever was watching remotely, but dismissed the idea as a little too juvenile.

He was in the bathroom. He leaned forward, on his hands, to look at his reflection in the mirror over the sink. Clu wasn’t sure why he was doing it. He knew he looked like Flynn, and even more so in user clothing, but surely there had to be some part of his face that was his own? He wondered, for the first time, why with all the fixes and improvements he’d made to himself, that was something he’d never even considered changing. Flynn had made him, but surely, to an extent he’d made himself? Clu hadn’t been Flynn’s in a long time. Why, then, did the thought of changing it feel so wrong?

There was a flicker of movement in the mirror. Clu jerked his head up but it was just Rinzler. Clu hadn’t heard him come in. The tension bled out of him as quickly as it had come. He was jumping at shadows. 

Rinzler shut the door behind him. He locked it with a flick of his wrist. Clu frowned. “Rinzler-“

Rinzler grabbed him by the throat and slammed him into the wall so hard he thought he heard the tile cracking. When his vision wavered back into place Rinzler’s hand was wrapped around his throat, his thumb crushing Clu’s trachea. Clu scrabbled at Rinzler’s fingers. The security program wasn’t making a sound. Rinzler leaned in, until his helmet was resting against Clu’s forehead. 

“Clu.” Rinzler’s voice was ice and gravel and barely contained fury. 

Clu choked under his hand. He couldn’t breathe but he knew, he knew. He never should have touched Rinzler’s code.

“You. Betrayed. Flynn.” Rinzler’s- no, Tron’s words came in pieces. Clu could hear the effort it took to shape them. “Betrayed us all.” He was pressing closer with each word, like he wanted to feel the moment when he derezzed Clu with his own hands. There was a ringing building up in Clu’s ears; things were starting to blur around the edges. He could taste copper.

“Stop,” Clu gasped, “stop-“ Rinzler was still in there too, he had to be. If he could just-

Tron’s grip got tighter. Clu felt something in his throat crunch a little. He tried to pull away with the last of his strength. The flailing was an animal response; it wasn’t helping. He wasn’t strong enough. His feet kicked and slid against the tile. He clawed at Tron’s hand and Tron didn’t waver. Clu bucked against him, full-bodied, and the grip loosened. He gulped down air. The blackness started to dissipate.

He heard a purr.

Clu mouthed Rinzler, but couldn’t get enough breath to speak. Rinzler was still pressed up against him, his hand still wrapped around Clu’s throat but not digging in. Clu shifted and the purr increased. He realized that their legs were tangled together. When he moved again, experimentally, Rinzler ground against him. His hand slid off Clu’s throat and traced Clu’s chin with his thumb, then moved to grip Clu’s shoulder. Apparently Rinzler was interpreting this in a completely different way. Did he even remember what he’d been doing seconds before? Clu started to push him away and the purr got quieter, almost fading entirely. Rinzler’s hand inched toward Clu’s throat and Clu stopped. 

If Tron resurfaced, he was going to be very dead, very fast. Clu could fight and get his head bashed in, or he could do whatever it took to keep Rinzler complacent and live to rectify another day. It was an easy choice to make.

Clu rolled his hips against Rinzler’s and the low purr came back twice as strong. Rinzler’s hand slid off Clu’s shoulder to brace against the wall, and the other traced Clu’s chest down to rest in the waistband of his pants; Rinzler’s voice was a rumble in his ear and he rutted against Clu like an animal. The pace was too fast, too rough. Clu set his hands on Rinzler’s hips to slow him down. In retaliation, Rinzler’s hand undid Clu’s pants and pumped the length of his cock once, twice. Clu groaned, open-mouthed. It hurt to make a sound; his voice was almost as rough as Rinzler’s.

Rinzler’s helmet sank down to rest on Clu’s shoulder. Clu saw Rinzler unzipping his own pants. There was a spark of irritation that Rinzler’s cock was bigger than his, and then it was gone as Rinzler rubbed up against him. The head of his cock nudged against Clu’s belly and Clu pulled him a little closer. He wrapped his hand around both their cocks together, and the sound Rinzler made was a growl, feral and deep. Rinzler’s hand joined it and tangled with Clu’s fingers. He started moving, slow at first, but Rinzler sped up until the pace was brutal. He ground against Clu almost hard enough to hurt, but there was something about that that Clu liked and he threw himself into it wholeheartedly, almost forgetting why this was happening in the first place. Rinzler panted against his neck and let go of the wall to dig his fingers into the soft skin of Clu’s side, then the curve of his ass.

Clu bit down on Rinzler’s shoulder as retaliation for the near throat-crushing, even though that wasn’t his fault- sort of- and the noise that Rinzler made went straight to his cock. Rinzler’s head tipped up and Clu licked along the path of the scar there on impulse. He could feel Rinzler’s purr through his tongue.

Rinzler’s thumb rubbed over the head of his cock and Clu came with a ragged shout. He watched, dazedly, as Rinzler ground against him with his whole body and finally streaked Clu’s belly with come. Clu sagged against the wall. His knees felt weak. Rinzler stayed where he was, pressed up against Clu and holding him up, purring in his ear. Clu’s mind was too empty to do anything but hold on. As the haze faded, his body made its complaints known one by one. His throat ached. He could feel where he’d have fingerprint bruises tomorrow. The back of his head hurt, and there was come drying stickily on his stomach. Rinzler’s purr was a steady pleased hum. It was a comforting sound. It meant no one was trying to kill him.

He never should have done anything for Montag. He knew it would go wrong. He should have been back in his cell, exhausted and cold and hungry but still fighting, but…

But that would have left Rinzler dying. Would they have let it happen? He didn’t know. There was something in him that rebelled at the thought of Rinzler being taken away from him, a vindictiveness that said that if Clu couldn’t have him, neither could anyone else. He considered the program pressed up against him. Was this what he’d wanted all along? 

Either way, should-haves and would-haves were pointless to consider. What was done was done and he had to live with his choices. The only trouble was that now he had a whole new set of problems to contend with.


	7. Chapter 7

Outside, the sun was setting. Not that you could see it very well through the clouds, but it was getting darker. The rain tapered off to something that was closer to a dribble than a downpour. 

Jarvis decided that the tiled space in the corner of the main room was meant for preparing food. He wasn’t sure how to go about it. It held a handful of machines: there was a refrigeration unit with nothing in it, a boxlike machine with a glass door that didn’t seem to do anything useful (when he pressed its buttons it lit up and hummed. That was all), and a chrome-sided cube with slots in the top. He pushed the handle down and watched the wires inside glow red. After a minute the handle jumped back up and Jarvis nearly hit his head on the cabinets. Rinzler made a sound that might have been a snicker. 

“Oh, and you were expecting that?”

Rinzler’s answer was to turn his head and go back to ignoring him. 

“That’s how you keep so much energy for derezzing people, you never do anything useful,” Jarvis muttered under his breath. Not that it mattered. Rinzler could probably hear him anyway.

The other two machines he was a little surer about. They were both built into the counter, and one was all dials and buttons, but he could feel the circles on top of it heating up when he played with the controls. The other was full of racks and had a little diagram of a dish being cleaned on the front. The main thing, though, was that there wasn’t much actual food to be had. There were a few cans of things Jarvis didn’t recognize in the cabinets, a brightly colored cardboard box half-full of some kind of grain… Stuff, a plastic bag of yellow sticklike things, and a few assorted bottles and bags and jars he couldn’t guess at. There was a book on the shelf over the sink.

He’d seen books once before. There had been a shelf full of them at Flynn’s house in the outlands. They were a kind of database, that much he knew. Jarvis took the book down and opened it lengthwise. It didn’t seem right, and he turned it on its side. The text resolved into neatly ordered blocks. He realized, to his dismay, that he didn’t actually know how to read user script. Machine code and packet transfer had always been so much more convenient. At least user script used the same set of symbols, but he wasn’t sure which shape represented which sound. He knew he’d seen Clu reading user text before, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to ask- Clu had been in a strange mood for the past few hours. He kept watching Rinzler out of the corner of his eye and pretending not to. Jarvis might not have noticed, except for his long practice with sensing Clu’s bad moods from a distance. Clu had been like that ever since the, ah, incident with Rinzler and the other room. Jarvis didn’t know what exactly had gone on in there, but he’d heard noises and could guess. There was another downside to leaving the grid- there was no one to buy him a round of drinks for finally settling that bet.

Jarvis held the book up. “I found something.”

Clu spared a split second to glance at Jarvis and the book cover. “The Joy of Cooking? What’s that supposed to be?”

That gave him four words, with twelve letters between them. That was half the alphabet right there, and he could puzzle out the rest as he went along. “It looks like an instruction manual.” Clu made a disinterested noise and turned away. Jarvis read the first page slowly, using the handful of letters he already had and substituting sounds for others inside his head until he could get something coherent. Within two pages he’d attributed sounds to all twenty-six letters, within five he’d learned and stored enough of the common words that he only had to pause once or twice a paragraph. He’d been right; it was an instruction manual for preparing food, which Jarvis hadn’t known was complicated enough to need a manual until that moment. Finding it was for the best, though. He was hungry, and didn’t think anyone would be bringing them a meal.

His new ability with user language helped him in another once-over of their supplies. The bag of sticks was spaghetti, the red jar was pasta sauce¸ and the cans were beans, pineapple and peaches in syrup. The jumble of bottles and boxes were sunflower oil, rice, lentils and sugar, among others. Not that the names in and of themselves were very helpful. Just because he could read the packaging didn’t mean he knew what they were. The manual was… Not so helpful, and assumed the reader wasn’t a complete beginner. There was an index but no search function that Jarvis could find. He looked up things that had an ingredient in the name. Pineapple upside-down cake had an attractive glossy picture, but he only had one or two of the components. The same went for fried rice and bean soup. But, at the beginning of a section titled Pasta there was a set of instructions for cooking spaghetti. It seemed simple enough.

Clu turned to arch an eyebrow at Jarvis as he was clattering through the pots and pans. “What are you doing?”

“Cooking, sir,” Jarvis frowned, “or trying to.”

“Cooking?”

“Preparing food, sir.”

Clu frowned. “What makes you think you can? You’ve got no idea how.”

“Neither do you.” Jarvis was momentarily shocked at himself and hastily added, “or Rinzler,” to make it sound less like an accusation. It didn’t matter either way. Clu had stopped paying attention to him. His distraction had its good sides. 

Jarvis pulled a deep pot out of the cabinet. Fifteen minutes later he had boiling water. He opened the packet of spaghetti and dumped the whole thing in. The manual said to wait eight minutes and drain off the water. He did, and lost some of the spaghetti to the sink, and some of it stuck to the pot, but it smelled all right. The picture in the book had the pasta topped with a red sauce. It looked a lot like the sauce in the glass jar and he poured a generous helping into the pot and mixed it all up. Jarvis wound a few strands around a fork and ate them. It… Wasn’t bad.

Clu looked into the pot with deep disgust. “That looks horrible.”

“It’s all right, sir.” Jarvis handed him a fork and Clu prodded at the spaghetti with it.

“What is this? It looks like it used to be alive.”

He picked up the plastic package and read the ingredients. “I don’t know, what’s a wheat?”

“Some kind of filthy creature, I expect,” Clu said, and ate a noodle experimentally. “All right, well, it’s not completely awful.”

“Thank you, sir.” Jarvis had long ago learned to take Clu’s compliments when they came, no matter how often they were backhanded (always). He took a plate from the shelf and helped himself to a generous portion. Clu took it out of Jarvis’ hands, walked off and started eating without a word. Jarvis closed his eyes and counted to sixteen before he said something he’d regret. He didn’t know why he even bothered, sometimes. Rinzler at least had the grace to nod at him before tipping up his helmet just enough to expose his mouth and walking off with Jarvis’ second plate.

**

The next morning began far, far too early. Clu woke up tangled in his sheets, his mind still caught up in a confused jumble of dreams. That was something he’d never get used to about being flesh and blood- when he slept, he hallucinated wildly. His mind was full of the grid. He’d dreamed he’d been back there, helplessly trapped in heavy user skin, and Flynn had laughed and laughed and laughed.

There was a ringing sound like an alarm coming from the main room. He stumbled out in search of it. Jarvis was already there, blearily searching for the source. Clu traced it to a sort of handset-thing and he picked it up. Eleanor Pola’s voice came tinnily through the earpiece. 

“Be dressed and at the front desk in twenty minutes. You’re being picked up. General Montag says, quote, ‘don’t wear those black wetsuits’.” There was a click of disconnection before Clu could work up a response. He was too out of it to do more than drop the handset back into place and scrub his hand across his eyes.

“What’s going on?”

“We’re being ordered around again.” Clu grimaced. Talking still hurt. He could feel the fingerprint bruises on his skin. “Go wake Rinzler and tell him we’re supposed to be ready to leave in twenty minutes. They want us in user clothes.”

Jarvis hesitated. “I don’t think he’ll like that, sir.”

“Did I ask you what you thought?”

“…No. Sir.” Jarvis took a few steps, and then looked back. “Why are we leaving?”

“How should I know?” Clu snarled, “Come here. Go there. Jump through a hoop. Good boy.” He stalked off without a backwards glance. There had to be something in the place that was up to his standards. There were clothes in all the bedrooms, but some were too big and some too small, and others just plain too ugly for Clu to even consider. He was almost tempted to wear his bodysuit and cloak out of spite. When he reached for it, he felt the buzz in his head and the stiffening of his hands that was his body fighting against him. The order had, apparently, been specific enough. Finally he turned away. There wasn’t much choice to be had. Most of the clothes they’d been supplied with were brightly colored or plastered with slogans, and he rejected them out of hand. 

There was a pile of discarded clothing on the floor behind him by the time he found the long bag in the back of the closet. He unzipped it. There was a grey suit inside. It… Wasn’t as good as black, but it was passable. It wouldn’t be humiliating to be seen in. Tucked inside it were a white button-up shirt and a tie that offended him just to look at. It was covered in little smiling cartoon shapes in eye-searing orange and purple. He tossed it aside. 

The suit wasn’t a perfect fit. It was too tight across the shoulders; he didn’t want to move too quickly in case it tore. The rest of it wasn’t bad. He had no shoes and so wore the boot sections of his bodysuit underneath. It wasn’t technically part of the bodysuit, but that small transgression started up something like an itch inside his head. It was nowhere near as bad as the time he’d tried to hit Montag, so he did his best to ignore it. It wasn’t easy.

Just under eighteen minutes had passed when the three of them finally made it out. It had been a struggle to get Rinzler to leave his helmet behind. Clu swore he had an unhealthy attachment to the thing. 

The few seconds they were in the open air were agony. It had warmed up since he day before, but the sun was a brilliant ball of light that seemed to have no purpose but to blind him. Clu squinted at his feet all the way down the stairs. When they got to the front office there was a soldier already there.

“You’re late,” said Pola.

Clu scowled. He wasn’t, he knew he wasn’t. “No I’m not.”

“Don’t argue with me.” She turned to the soldier. “They’re all yours.” Pola did something under her desk, and the door’s deadbolts disengaged with a heavy thump. Clu didn’t give her another glance and started on his way. They were nearly to the door when she said “not you.” Clu turned. She was pointing at Jarvis.

Jarvis rubbed his wrist. “Not me?”

“You’re not needed.”

“…Oh. So what do I…?”

“Not my problem.”

The last Clu saw of Jarvis before the door shut between them, he was still standing there looking lost. Maybe it would toughen him up a little to be left on his own. Then again, maybe not. This was Jarvis, after all.

He spent the trip back to the military compound scheming different ways to get them to put him back in the grid with Rinzler. He had to repair the code; his changes had obviously been a little unstable. He hated that they’d made him change Rinzler in the first place. It had taken so long to get him right. On the other hand… Clu touched the row of neat ovals half-hidden under his collar. He supposed there were certain amendments he could allow, so long as the part where he was nearly killed didn’t happen. However, the two of them were separated almost as soon as they got in the door. That made the problem even bigger. He couldn’t just admit that his restructuring wasn’t flawless. He needed them to need him. If they didn’t… Well, it would be bad. He was sure of that.

He thought they were bringing him to the server room as usual, but they took a left and walked into another room completely. They’d set the laser up here. It was linked up to a computer that stood alone. Hellard was fiddling with a bit of cabling and a few other scientists milled around. Montag, in the only bit of good luck he’d had for days, wasn’t around. One of the female scientists- a new one, he hadn’t seen her before- walked by him, then backed up and laughed.

“Was she a little rough?”

Clu frowned. “What?”

Her finger circled the whole… Throat region, and Clu’s hand went reflexively to the little oval bruises there. He felt a sudden wave of revulsion for easily marked user flesh. “Your girlfriend. Whoever. Most people would wear a turtleneck if it was that bad.” He colored. That wasn’t what had happened- except it was, a little. She took his silence for pure embarrassment. It was about ninety percent true, and it was almost a relief when Hellard looked up and saw Clu standing there.

“Finally showed up, did you?”

“What do you mean finally?” Clu said bitterly, “I don’t have any say in when or where I get shipped off to. If I’m late it’s your people’s fault.”

Hellard had an irritating little smirk. “Now, now. Don’t be speciesist.” Clu curled his lip in response.

The woman looked at him with new eyes. Gone was the easy joking. Her gaze was sharp and curious. “Wait, this is subject one?”

Clu’s lip curled further. “Oh, I have a number, now? That’s beautiful, just beautiful. Maybe next you can stop speaking to me directly altogether? I’ll just be a nice quiet piece of walking furniture. You people. Honestly. I don’t know how you muster enough brainpower to keep breathing, sometimes.”

“Wow,” the woman blinked, “how do you pack so much asshole into such a small package?”

That threw him a little. It had been a long, long time since anyone had bothered (or earlier, dared) to insult him back. “…A lot of practice. I think I’m entitled, given the circumstances.”

“It prefers the name Clu,” said Hellard, “ridiculous as it may be.”

“My name is ridiculous? I passed your parking space on the way in. Howard Hellard? Really? Just the once wasn’t enough?”

Hellard gave him a poisonous look and turned back to the woman. “And it’s always like this. You know what they say about AI- the easiest way to pass the Turing test is to program a complete jackass.” 

The woman, though, seemed more interested in Clu than Hellard. She looked Clu up and down. “Well, you’re certainly convincing, I’ll give you that.” She held out her hand. “Mila Novak. I’m a specialist in obsolete programming languages.”

Clu looked down at the hand, then back up. He made no move to take it. “I’m sorry, you’re going to be picking me apart, and you want to be friendly?” The hand didn’t waver.

“No reason to be antagonistic.”

“I’ll pass.”

Her hand dropped, and she sighed. “Suit yourself. We may as well get started, if you’re ready.”

Hellard rolled his eyes. “Don’t coddle it. Orders work better. You,” he said to Clu, pointing at the other side of the room, “over there. Now.”

Clu felt the inexorable tug of the order and was moving almost before he had the chance to think about it. He longed to knock Hellard’s smug face in, but his fingers only twitched and sent a bolt of pain up his arm. He pictured Rinzler, in his mind’s eye, mowing down the lot of them, but that just made him think of his own programming problems. It didn’t make him feel any better. Again, he regretted ever agreeing to help them in any way whatsoever. That was something he knew, deep down to the core of him; never trust a user. Not even Flynn. Flynn had-

He cut off that train of thought before it started.

“Bring in the secondaries,” said Hellard, and then he turned to Clu. “It’s a different setup today. You’ve been granted your request.” He gestured at the standalone computer and the laser it was hooked up to. “No partition. It’s a clean drive, but not networked to anything. You still won’t have complete control so don’t get any ideas.”

Clu furrowed his brow. How clean did he mean by clean? There had to be an operating system at least, and with that, there might be other attendant programs. Then again, maybe not. How careful had they been? Hellard walked off, and Clu watched him go. He fantasized about dragging Hellard into the grid kicking and screaming, and rebuilding him from the inside out into something suitably humiliating. Maybe something like the patch they’d put on him- he’d leave Hellard at the whim of any program, any program at all, and keep him aware of it the whole time. The same went for Montag.

“Clu.”

He started. Novak was at his elbow; he hadn’t seen her approach. “What now?”

“We’ve set up a relay system to allow plaintext transmissions from inside the computer and outside it,” she said, “much more convenient than taking you in and out. But while I have you here, here’s a question.” Novak held out a single sheet of paper. He didn’t take it. She shook it at him. “Read it.”

Clu ignored the compulsion as long as he could, and only when the discomfort ratcheted up to a drill in his head he snatched it out of her fingers. A quick once-over was all he needed. It was a section of Jarvis’ code. He pretended not to recognize it.

“This part is some kind of ultracompressed new language, we know that much,” she tapped one of the sections that Clu had rewritten completely, and then her hand slid down the page to one of the fragmented sections of Jarvis’ original code. “But this part is written in Pascal. Why?”

That question was an easy one to dodge. Why had any program been written in one user language over another? “I don’t know.”

“Fine. More to the point, why are the two languages mashed up like this? Why doesn’t it cause a problem?”

That one was a little harder. “It’s… Adaptation,” managed Clu, “sometimes things are overwritten, or changed.”

She looked thoughtful. “Like evolution.”

Clu thought of the ISOs and repressed a shudder. No, nothing like that. Nothing like the persistent little hives of chaos that had threatened to tear the grid apart with their unpredictability, and nothing like the user world’s vast love for all things flawed and corrupt. Novak frowned, but before she said anything else Hellard interrupted.

“Bring them over here.”

Clu turned around. They’d brought in two users in orange jumpsuits- no, two programs. He could tell from their dull faces that they were no more than footsoldiers. When he could only see the surface shapes of them it was difficult to tell what they’d been before that. Hellard was suddenly behind him.

“You may be a jackass,” said Hellard, “but you reason just fine. These two and most of the others? We can barely get a coherent word out of ‘em that isn’t ‘death to the users’. And they’re not being stubborn. The deeper thoughts just aren’t there. Why is that?”

When the two programs saw Clu their faces lit up in a fierce kind of joy. They stood straight and tall, waiting for his orders. They must have been among the masses he’d batch-rectified. It had been quick and dirty, no time for fine-tuning or working around a program’s individual strengths and weaknesses. He… Regretted that, a little, now. They reminded him of the copies the users had tried to make of him, inexpertly carved. “Because only the commander has to think,” he murmured, and then cursed himself for the lapse.

They put him into the grid first, alone, with orders to rectify the footsoldiers when they were sent in. He couldn’t quite bring himself to look at the two programs. It felt like as much of a betrayal as being forced to rectify Rinzler. Maybe even more so- the footsoldiers trusted him implicitly. They would die for him on his slightest whim; even Rinzler would hesitate on a suicide order, but not them.

The laser hummed to life and Clu shut his eyes. The process of being deconstructed and remade looked/felt/smelled/sounded the same whether they were open or not. He wasn’t even sure that what it was like could be ascribed to normal senses. It was like hearing color and tasting sound. When the beam put him back together in digital form he stood still and let his senses come back to him. He could tell just from the feel of the air on his skin that this grid was much, much bigger than the last. No- not air; he’d been in the user world too long. It was the shape of the nothing that expanded around him in every direction. The magnetic-field sense of the system in the back of his mind told him what he’d see before he even opened his eyes.

He stood on a flat black plain that stretched out almost to infinity in every direction. Behind him, the I/O tower was full size and a pillar of blazing light that rose up what seemed like miles into the black sky. The system was open, untouched. Clu held out his hand experimentally and part of the ground shivered upwards, tier by tier, into a miniature replica of his tower in his grid. He held it there for a few milliseconds and then let it dissolve into nothing. They really had lifted his restrictions, then.

Before anything else, he reworked himself. His suit was recolored to a matte black, and he widened the shoulders just enough to make it a better fit. The bruises on his neck were wiped away with a thought. He pulled up the system profile and almost choked. The system memory was listed as just over a terabyte. That was- that was ludicrous. Clu himself barely topped five megabytes, and he was complex enough to be considered unwieldy in his own system. The grid- his grid- was hard-capped at two hundred and fifty megabytes. His grid could sit comfortably inside this one four thousand times over. The numbers had to be wrong. There was no other explanation. He shooed the floating window away.

A simple wall extruded itself from the ground. Clu watched it warily but it topped out at six feet, and the contours of it flickered to life in white as it drew power from the grid. The words test, test, respond appeared on its surface. 

This must be the users’ text relay. He’d half hoped it would be a program instead of direct input. At least that way he could confirm whether or not the frankly absurd system specifications were right. He touched the wall’s surface and an interface hovered in front of it in overlay. Clu keyed in haven’t you got anything more interesting to say?

He waited for a response, but it didn’t come. Eventually, in boredom, he started building. It had been too long since he’d had a landscape to bend to his will. Clu didn’t make anything full size- instead he sculpted experimental architecture in miniature, so that by the time a ping returned he had a small forest of buildings no more than shoulder height. The message on the wall was that was quick.

Clu furrowed his brow and sent back what was?

Again, the relay went dark, and again, no response. He was back to tweaking the angle of a bridge no wider than his arm when it hit him- time ran differently in here and out there. How could it have slipped his mind? Some quick mental calculations later he realized that a single minute passing in the user world was the equivalent of fifty here, almost an eighth of a millicycle. This was going to be a long, long conversation. If it was going to take that much time, there was no point in hanging around here.

The tiny city was razed with an errant thought on his part. He set about constructing something more useful. The lightcycle took shape under his hands. It had been a long time since he’d made one with his own two hands, but it wasn’t difficult. He couldn’t create programs but this was more a script than anything, a simple abstraction and an extension of himself. The blueprints were all there in his head, and there was a certain pleasure in sculpting the body, pulling vertices into place and running his hands along the inside curve of the wheel well hollows to make sure they were the right shape. When he was done, the tracery of circuitry on its surface was a softly pulsing gold, the machinery of it all slick black curves. As an afterthought, he turned back to the wall and entered another message.

I’m much faster in here than you are. Try not to bore me.

It was the work of a moment to weave part of the relay wall into a remote rebroadcaster. It was a heavy black sphere that fit comfortably into his palm. He tucked it into his pocket. Another few microcycles and he’d reconstructed the glossy black lightcycle helmet that folded over his face at a command and linked the relay to it. If the users pinged him, he could answer from anywhere. He threw his leg over the side of the lightcycle. It hummed to life under him and he spent a moment just appreciating the feel of it, the freedom of being able to move on his own whims. Clu twisted his wrist and the lightcycle roared and shot forward. He molded his body to it, steered just by shifting his weight. He didn’t know how far this grid extended, but there had to be something beyond the plains, even if it was wasteland. It wasn’t like he could get lost; the I/O tower was a blazing light behind him.

A ping caught his attention and glowing white text filled a corner of his visor. How much faster do you perceive time passing? What were you just coding?

Clu made a face at the block of text. What did it matter to them? “What’s the speed of thought?” he said. “The coding was me relieving my boredom, because I simply cannot believe the sheer uselessness you’re putting me through.” He pressed himself closer to the lightcycle and urged it still faster. “And which one of you is talking to me?” The rebroadcaster dutifully transmitted his message. There was a blessed stretch of uninterrupted speed across the plains. He was going fast enough that he could feel the tug of inertia whenever he shifted.

That doesn’t matter, the ping finally came, How would you describe what you’re ‘seeing’ in human terms?

“It’s black and it’s flat. Very exciting. Why don’t you come in and see for yourself?”

The ping came a little faster this time. Is that possible?

Clu frowned. That seemed… Off. They didn’t know? “If you want to be rewritten,” he hedged, and the delay before the next ping was almost three times as long as usual. The message, when it came, was unrelated.

The first subject is being sent through now.

Clu cursed to himself and swung the lightcycle around in a wide arc, back towards the I/O tower. It was already starting to flare as it knit flesh into data. The lightcycle’s purr ratcheted up to a dangerous whine. He didn’t want to have to hunt down wandering programs in this expanse, especially if it was as big as it said. If he crashed at this speed he’d probably derezz himself, but that was half the fun. By the time he’d reached the I/O tower the program had finished coming through. It looked just as it had outside the grid, prison jumpsuit and all, except for the fine tracery of red circuits glowing on its skin. The next ping was waiting for him. All it said was rectify.

Clu let his helmet section away and disappear into nothing. He left the lightcycle where it was. The other program saluted as he got closer. “Your Excellency!”

Clu held out his hand. “Your disk, program.”

The disk was in Clu’s hand in a microcycle. He drew the program’s code out into a cloud of red particles. He could sense the shape of the other program, its architecture. The batch processing had left obedience, weapons training, a fanatical loyalty to Clu and little else. To his dismay, he realized that most of the program’s finer points had been compressed into generalized blocks. He never should have left the batching to others, but doing it himself would have taken so much time. The delicate looping of loyalties he’d performed on Jarvis and, to less effect, on Rinzler, wouldn’t work here. All he could do without reworking the program from the ground up was, in essence, flipping a switch. Change out the all-encompassing commandment for obedience from himself to the users.

It was not something he wanted to do.

The dull itch of an order not followed was building up from the base of his spine. It would get worse with time, he knew. Clu grit his teeth as the itch grew into a buzz, and then a sensation like insects in his skin. He held out as long as he could but there was a point when it became unbearable, and he plunged his hand into the code and made the change. He shut his eyes as the feeling ebbed away. Clu held the disk in his hands and wondered if he could hide some small subroutine inside. After so many days, their loyalty would revert to Clu, and take out as many users as they could reach-

His hands were locked tight around the disk. There was a punishing jolt of pain in his head for even thinking of such a thing, and when he was able to move his fingers again he held out the disk. The program reattached it without complaint. His circuits flashed white and Clu grimaced. Would he be attacked, or would the program only act on orders?

The program didn’t do anything. It kept standing where it was, staring off into the distance with its dull eyes, and Clu crossed his arms. “Who do you serve?”

Nothing.

“There’s not much to you, but I know you can speak. Who do you serve?”

Nothing.

…Was it ignoring him? With its altered loyalties, was he no longer important enough to acknowledge? That rankled. “I’m talking to you,” Clu stalked up to it, “don’t you dare pretend you can’t hear me.”

Nothing.

Clu growled in the back of his throat and pulled the relay ball out of his pocket. “It’s done,” he said to it, “enjoy. This one started out useless and he still is.”

When the message came back, it was S137, proceed through portal. S1, wait for next. The program walked to the I/O tower on its own. He was S137, then? Subject one-thirty-seven? It made sense, if Clu was supposed to be subject one. He just wondered how they’d gotten him to respond to it.

When the program had returned to the world of flesh and blood, Clu spent a while just thinking. It wasn’t a stretch to assume that eventually the users would figure out rectification on their own, and they wouldn’t need him at all. This system- this system was huge, it could accommodate a little extra information. He took off his own disk and started teasing out pieces of his own code. It wasn’t much, mostly just memories and select bits of his personality, but he copied them and bundled them up inconspicuously in another patch of his data. It was just enough to be a backup in case of emergencies. He hoped he’d never need it.

The I/O tower flared, and Clu watched as another orange-jumpsuited program walked through. The relay ball pinged him.

Rectify.

**

Jarvis stood there in the front office for a little while after the door closed. Why hadn’t they just said they didn’t need him in the first place? It would have saved him getting out of bed. He liked sleeping, he’d discovered. What was he going to do with himself all day? There was more to occupy him than there’d been in the cells, but he wasn’t sure how he felt at being left to his own devices.

A thought occurred to him. “Ms. Pola?”

“What?” Her suit looked a little different today, but Jarvis wasn’t sure how, only that it was. Did she keep sets of near-identical clothes for each day? Why?

“You said certain things could be requested,” said Jarvis, “there’s very little food for us.”

She stopped typing just long enough to look up. “What do you want?”

“I…” said Jarvis, and then he realized that he didn’t know. Even in the cells he’d never been sure what he was eating. It was always trays of barely differentiated stuff, anyway, whether it was brown or white or grey. Pola rolled her eyes at his hesitation and held out a piece of paper.

“Take a request form. Fill it out and bring it back when you’re not so indecisive.”

He took the form. There was no reason to stay in the front office and he wandered back to the courtyard. There was a chill in the air, but the sun was bright and warm on his skin. He squinted at it and had to look away after a few seconds. The light left purple splotches hovering in front of him until he blinked them away. Whoever had programmed it programmed it badly, Jarvis decided. Heat and light were all well and good, but there were limits. 

He retrieved his cookbook and a pen from the rooms, and on a second thought pulled his coat off its hanger. It had dried overnight, and he shrugged it on. Jarvis walked back down to the courtyard to write his list. The wetness of yesterday’s rain had evaporated and the ground was dry. With the coat on the temperature was pleasant, and he sat under a tree. The shade from its bare branches made the sunlight not quite so blinding.

He meant to write his list, he really did. The problem was not knowing where to start. It ended up with him gradually slouching lower and lower against the tree trunk until he was lying on the grass, and then he was asleep.

**

Rinzler was steered onto a different path just after they arrived. It set off conflicting impulses in him. He should be at Clu’s side, but he was also to obey the users. There was a moment where the imperatives fought. It held him at a standstill until one won over the other. He followed the users. They kept their eyes on him, and themselves at arm’s length. That was good. It meant he wasn’t following the orders of stupid men.

The room they led him to was small, bare and grey. A low table sat against one wall. It held a small machine. There was a tinted window in the back wall through which he could dimly see the outlines of observers. As he watched the window went clear. There were a few people behind it but the only one he paid attention to was Montag. He presided over the users as Clu presided over the programs. Rinzler had no desire to submit himself to underlings.

Two of Montag’s guards took up posts at the door, and the other saluted to him through the glass. “Sir.”

Montag didn’t get out of his seat, but his voice came through a tiny speaker set into the wall. “You,” he glanced at a sheet of paper on the desk in front of him, “Rinzler, is it?” Rinzler nodded, and Montag cleared this throat and continued. “You’re to follow this man’s orders, do you understand that?”

Rinzler eyed the soldier. He was a well-built man. Rinzler could see the layer of armored padding on him. The man looked wary, but not afraid, and that was something Rinzler approved of. Caution belonged to the predator; fear belonged to prey. He gave Montag a slow nod. Montag sat back in his chair.

“Begin, then.”

The soldier took the little machine from the table. It was a palm-sized black box that he held in one hand, and a stubby, thin metal cylinder connected by a cord that he held in the other. He was careful to hold the cylinder by the black rubber on its base. He flicked a switch on the box, and Rinzler could hear a high-pitched electrical whine. When the soldier touched the metal to the table it sparked. He held it out in front of him.

“This’ll hurt,” said the soldier, “touch it.”

They were testing his loyalty. Rinzler didn’t think twice; he touched the metal with the back of his hand. There was a snap and a slight smell of burning. The muscles in his hand seized and curled away from the source. The guards watched him carefully. Rinzler shook his hand out, and the soldier glanced sideways at Montag. Montag made a circular hand gesture.

“Again,” said the soldier. This time, Rinzler grabbed hold of the metal in a fist. There was no point in prolonging this. The electricity coursed up his arm, locking every muscle in place. His knuckles went stark white with the force of his grip. Higher up near his shoulder the muscle was twitching as the current dissipated through it. It smelled like seared meat. There was pain, but he pushed it aside. It was unimportant. A few seconds passed and the guard looked down at the box and back up at him. “Stop.”

He found that he couldn’t. His fingers were locked tight around the metal, and pulling away just dragged the cord with him. He growled low in his throat and grabbed the cord with his other hand. He couldn’t pull it free. With every second that passed it felt like his grip got tighter. He could almost feel his bones creaking. When it became clear that he couldn’t drop it on his own the soldier flipped the switch. The sudden change let Rinzler’s hand fall open; the cylinder dropped, clattered against the floor, and bounced up again on its cord. His fingers twitched. He held his hand up; the palm was scorched red and cracked. There were pockets of fluid already accumulating under the skin. He flexed his fingers- still functional- and ignored the damage. It should heal.

The guard grimaced. “Jesus.”

Rinzler waited for the next set of instructions. He’d proved his allegiance, however tiresome it was to ask for physical proof. Maybe it wouldn’t be enough for them. Clu had never demanded tests or demonstrations of loyalty. He had simply known, but users were different. He-

Fought for the users-

Served the users as he had served Clu. It was not his place to question their whims.

“Rinzler,” Montag’s voice crackled through the speaker, “you really are quite obedient, aren’t you?” Rinzler tilted his head to the side, which Montag seemed to take as a positive sign. “Good. Very good. Gentlemen, if you’d be so kind?”

The guard in front of him bundled up the device and retreated. Someone else was led in; Rinzler took in the jumpsuit, the handcuffs. A program. Not a footsoldier, but one of the black guards. Rinzler thought he recognized him, or at least had seen him before, but couldn’t be sure. The program seemed encouraged by Rinzler’s presence and struggled against the men at his shoulders. “Sir!” 

The guards gave him a sudden push and he stumbled a few steps before righting himself. The guards, meanwhile, retreated. “One of yours, I think,” said Montag, “not quite as stubborn as you were, but still quite the piece of work. Mm, what was his name?” He flipped through his papers and shrugged. “Well, it doesn’t matter. He has a few things we want to know, but such trouble talking. Don’t worry, you won’t have to ask the questions.” He chuckled at his own little joke.

Rinzler saw the black guard tense. Things weren’t going the way he expected, and Rinzler wondered what he had thought was going to happen. “Sir,” the program licked his lips nervously, “you’re not going to…?”

“Don’t kill him, now,” Montag sat back in his chair, hands clasped on the table, “no fatal damage.”

That was a difficult task. Users were constructed so differently from programs- what could a flesh and bone body live through, or not? Still, he would be careful and test the limits gradually. Rinzler took a step forward. The black guard took a step back.

“Please,” said the program, “Rinzler-“ Rinzler cut him off with a growl. The last thing the program said- coherently- for a good long time was a whispered “traitor.” Rinzler didn’t know why it stuck in his mind. It echoed long, long after the sound of the word was gone and he was down to just the feel of it, butting up against conflicting memories and impulses, catching on his rough edges.


	8. Chapter 8

“Hey, mister?”

The world was a dull, glowing red. Then the confusion cleared and Jarvis opened his eyes. He’d fallen asleep out in the open. Embarrassing, but it could’ve been worse- Clu could have been around to catch him at it. It was warmer now, and the sun was higher in the sky. He could feel the prickle of heat on his face. He sat up and rolled his shoulders. The ground, as it turned out, was not so good for his back.

Wait, someone had been talking to him, hadn’t they? He turned his head and there was a user standing there. Jarvis frowned. The user looked… Strange. Too small. If Jarvis stood up the user would barely come up to his hip, and even his proportions were off. The user’s head was too big, and his legs too short. Was there something wrong with him? If so, Jarvis hoped it wasn’t contagious. “What?”

“Um, have you seen Madeleine?”

“…What’s a Madeleine?”

The user’s lip quivered. Jarvis looked on with trepidation. Was it going to cry? What was he supposed to do with a crying, malformed user? “My cat. She was supposed to stay in her carrier until we left and I wasn’t supposed to let her out but I did and she got out the door and now I can’t find her and if I can’t then we’ll leave and I’ll never see her again and-“

“All right, all right, enough,” Jarvis waved his hands, alarmed, “what’s a cat?”

That distracted the user long enough to forestall the crying. “What do you mean, what’s a cat?”

“I’m not… From around here?” From the way the user talked about it, the thing was a possession, but a possession with autonomy. Some kind of machine, maybe, but a machine he was attached to. “What does it look like?”

“She’s gray. About this big.” The user held his hands a short distance apart. “Help me find her.”

His reprogramming was subtle. It didn’t register as an order to think about and either follow or reject, but as an automatic imperative. Jarvis got to his feet. The user was just as short as he’d thought, and missing one or two teeth to boot. He frowned at that but made no comment. “Where would…” if it had a gender, could it be a machine? What else would it be, some kind of lower life form? A simplified intelligence, like a bit? “She go?”

“Small places. High-up places, or under stuff. I’m Casey. Don’t tell my mom I’m out here, okay?”

Another order, unconsciously noted. “I won’t,” said Jarvis, and because it seemed the thing to do, “my name is Jarvis.”

Casey led him up the stairs. “Like in Iron Man? That’s cool. It’s kinda a weird name for a person, though.”

“It’s not weird.” Or was it? Certainly it was unique on the grid, but so was every other name. It was a simple organizational precaution. Name duplication would lead to errors in information routing, and before you knew it you’d be neck-deep in misidentified packets. It would be chaos and Clu would be furious for millicycles. And what was an iron man, anyway?

There were no cats on the third floor balcony, or any of the others. By the time Jarvis was on the stairs back down to the courtyard he was starting to doubt that there was such a thing as a cat, and this was some test or joke at his expense. Casey kept up a constant stream of chatter about things that were frankly incomprehensible, dinosaurs and movies and video games. Jarvis wondered if that last one bore any relation to the game grid and dismissed the thought. The user was much too small to accurately pilot a lightcycle. 

Now there was a question. “Why are you so small?”

“Because I’m eight,” said Casey, “how old are you?”

“One thousand, four hundred and fifty cycles.” Eight- that was hardly anything. Did users start out small and get bigger? How were users made, anyhow?

Casey’s mouth hung open. “You’re lying.”

“No I’m not.”

“Are you a vampire?”

Jarvis wrinkled his nose and stepped out of the stairwell. “A what?”

“Casey!” There was a woman in the courtyard. She dashed at them. “You get away from him right now!” Jarvis took an involuntary step back and raised his hands.

“He lost his-“ what was the thing called, again? “Cat. Casey asked me to help look.”

Casey rounded on him. “You said you wouldn’t tell!”

“Did I?” said Jarvis, “I don’t think I did.”

The woman came to a stop a few feet away. Her clothes were rumpled- slept in? She had a slump to her shoulders. Exhaustion, Jarvis thought. He’d seen that same posture on himself after millicycles of Clu running him ragged. She looked at Casey. “Is that true?”

“Yeah, but mom-“

“I told you not to let her out of the carrier! And I told you not to leave the room. It was only one night, why couldn’t you…” she sighed, and turned to Jarvis. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to- I just assumed the worst.”

Jarvis didn’t know exactly what she was getting at, but things seemed to have smoothed out, so that was all right. “It’s fine. I wasn’t busy anyway.” Was Mom her name? He almost thought so, except that the first time Casey had used it, it was possessive. My mom. More like a title, and she obviously outranked him in some way. He decided to keep his mouth shut on the matter.

“Well, did you find Madeleine?” The woman looked down at Casey. His lower lip jutted out.

“No. But she’s gotta be down here, there’s no other way out.”

“We don’t have long,” the woman eyed the courtyard. It wasn’t big, but there were plenty of places a small thing could hide. She turned to Jarvis. “I’m sorry to ask you this, but could you keep looking? It’s just, we only have an hour and a half until they come and move us again.”

“…That’s fine,” said Jarvis. There wasn’t much else to occupy his time, and anyway, this presented a bit of a puzzle. He’d thought this was a prison, of a sort, but these two didn’t seem like the type. His book and form were still sitting under the tree where he’d left them and he picked them up. The woman passed by, looking under a row of bushes. Jarvis decided to ask just to see what sort of answer he’d get. “Why are you here?”

She smiled, but it was small and strained. “Witness protection. The FBI-“ she stopped, and started again, “the thing is, my husband-“ her smile went even more strained, “well, you don’t want to know about that. I don’t think they even wanted to put us in here, but it was an emergency. Just for the night, until they move us somewhere else. Only they said to stay inside. They said there were people here who are criminals, or mafia, or- or something like that. When I saw you with my son, I thought… I don’t know what I thought.”

There were a few more unfamiliar terms: FBI and husband and son and mafia. Jarvis filed them away for future investigation. “I don’t know about that. You’re the first users I’ve seen.” He realized too late what that implied about him. “Not that I’m a criminal. Or at least, I don’t think I am.”

“Good to know,” she said, but she was looking at him strangely, “users?”

“…Ah. Never mind. It’s nothing.” Of course, they didn’t call themselves that, did they? Stupid of him. 

There was a period of silence, punctuated only by the rustling of branches and the occasional crunch of gravel underfoot. The next time they passed close to one another, the woman nodded at what he carried in his hand. “What’s with the cookbook?”

“This?” He held it up. “I was trying to write up a list of requests. There wasn’t much food provided.” The form tucked into the book was still blank. “I’m not sure where to begin, honestly.”

That got a laugh out of her. “Men,” she shook her head, “why don’t you start with the basics? Fruit, vegetables, milk, you know. Don’t fill the freezer with frozen pizzas.” Jarvis wasn’t sure what any of that meant, but milk was a food. He knew that. It was an ingredient in several recipes in his book. He wrote it down on the form.

“What else would you recommend?”

“Well, what do you want?”

Jarvis fidgeted. Would it be considered too odd for her if he didn’t know? Users had to be familiar with foodstuffs, it was what kept them alive. Still, he couldn’t pretend at knowledge he didn’t have the smallest piece of. “…I don’t know.”

“You really don’t, do you?” She frowned. “Have you ever even bought groceries before?”

“Not… As such.”

“You some kind of foreign prince or something? Who doesn’t buy groceries?” The woman shook her head and looked disbelieving. Casey chose that moment to wander by and enlighten her. 

“Jarvis is a vampire, mom! And he’s like a zillion years old!”

“Casey-“

“It’s true!”

“Casey. The man’s not a vampire.” She looked apologetic. “Sorry. Kids, you know. Look, why don’t you look up some things on the Internet? Our room had a laptop so yours probably does too. It’s got some,” she waved a hand, “net nanny restrictions but it should be okay.” Jarvis thought about it. Clu had declared the computer useless, but maybe it would be good for something after all? 

“All right. I’ll try that.” Jarvis knelt down to look into a narrow drainage culvert and saw two points of light looking back at him. He frowned at it. Was that the cat? “I think I found your Madeleine.” 

Luring the cat out took some time. Reaching straight in resulted in scratches, which led to Jarvis staring, bewildered, at the parallel cuts on the back of his hand. What was this thing? Who would want it? Eventually, Casey disappeared into one of the ground floor rooms- number seven, he thought it was- and came back out with a handful of some pink, rubbery-looking things he called bologna. The cat edged out, bit by bit, for the food. Jarvis was surprised to see the thing in daylight. It was furry, with four legs, a pointed face, a tail and a black and grey striped coat. He wondered where its sharp edges had gone.

He touched its side as it ate. It didn’t seem to mind. In fact, he could feel its side vibrating, and heard a low purr. He laughed. “It sounds like Rinzler!”

“What’s a Rinzler?” said Casey.

“Oh. He’s- one of the people here. He’s not here now. He’s got this big scar,” Jarvis drew his thumb across his throat in a sharp slash, “and he makes this-” Casey looked fascinated, but the woman looked horrified. “…Sound.”

“Cool!” said Casey, “what happened to him?”

It was so long ago. Jarvis squinted and tried to remember how it had gone. He hadn’t been there, but he remembered hearing about it at the time. Everyone had. “Clu cut his throat. He’s one of the other people here, by the way- but it worked out all right. He fixed him right up afterwards.”

Things got a little awkward after that.

**

The black guard had long since been dragged away, but traces of his presence remained. Rinzler inspected the thin crust of dried blood under his fingernails. It was difficult to pick out and his burned hand wasn’t helping. The users had bandaged it, but it itched. He’d rather be able to see the damage; sometimes when his palm flexed it felt like something splitting, but without visual confirmation he couldn’t be sure.

Montag had congratulated him. He didn’t know why. He was only following orders.

They’d moved on to a different room. This one was long and narrow, with one side of it divided into long corridors. A weapons range, Rinzler thought. A paper target in the shape of a man hung at the end of each with a grey bulls-eye on the head and chest. On his side of the room was a table with a metal box on it, and a single guard. It was the same one who’d tested him. Montag and his retinue had followed along as well. They still weren’t directly in the room with them, instead in an adjoining room separated by another glass and mesh wall, but it didn’t feel quite the same. Their body language was looser, more relaxed. He got the impression that the other room’s separation had been for security and this was for some other purpose. There was even a door connecting the two.

The guard opened the box. Rinzler had seen the things inside before, but only pointed at him. 

“Have you ever fired a gun before, Rinzler?” Montag’s voice floated though an open panel in the glass, “No? Consider this rounding out your education.”

There were two of the things in the box. The guard laid them out end to end on the table. Rinzler picked up the nearest one and turned it over in his hands. This, he thought, was also a test; they were giving him a weapon and waiting to see if he’d turn on them. He held the gun as he’d seen soldiers do it, aimed down the firing range, and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.

“It helps if the gun’s actually loaded,” said the guard, “but we’re not doing that first. You have to know how it works.” He took the other gun and disassembled it into its component parts; then, just as quickly, he reassembled it. Rinzler watched carefully. He repeated what he’d seen. It wasn’t quite as quick as the guard had done. Rinzler didn’t have the benefit of practice. “You’ve… Have you done this before?”

Rinzler shook his head. The guard’s mouth compressed to a thin line. 

“…Right.” He showed Rinzler how to load the gun. He didn’t seem especially happy about being the one to do it. Montag, Rinzler noted, was still watching him carefully. His posture was relaxed, and he looked calm, but he never took an eye off Rinzler. The guard led him to the range and handed him something that looked like two bits of padded foam on a curved bit of plastic. Rinzler looked at him questioningly until the guard put one on himself. It was meant to cover the ears. When Rinzler put it on it was like dropping into the sea; sound faded to a dull roar. Out of the corner of his eye he saw one of Montag’s underlings closing the panel on the window.

He aimed at the paper man. There were two grey rings for targets and Rinzler decided to aim for the lower. His first shot rang in his ears, even with the protection. The bullet went wild, up and to the right, and barely grazed the paper at all. He overcompensated for the second and it was too low, but closer to the target. Rinzler hummed, pleased. He had the range on it now. The next few shots went straight through the grey heart target in a neat little circle. When the track on the ceiling came to life and brought it forward for inspection, he put his finger through the hole. It was quite good for a first try, he thought. Nothing that couldn’t be improved on, but good. The soldier took it and looked a little ill.

Rinzler slid the protective earmuffs off to hang around his neck. The soldier held up the target where Montag could see it, and Montag’s eyebrows rose. The panel slid open again. “You sure you’ve never done this before?” 

Rinzler growled low in his throat. Of course he hadn’t- he wouldn’t lie to a user.

Montag shook his head in disbelief and waved for them to continue. As Rinzler reloaded he heard a door open and close in the other room, and saw one of Montag’s aides bending low to talk to him. If he strained, he could hear parts of what they were saying.

“-the surveillance footage,” the aide was saying, and part of the sentence was drowned out, then, “-should see-“

The panel shut with a snap. The rest of it was cut off. Rinzler went back to loading the gun. It was a simple motion, almost calming. One-two-three. Parts clicked out, parts clicked in. Still, he’d rather have disks in his hands. User weapons seemed much more dependant on collateral damage rather than precision. He could picture how a bullet would tear through soft flesh, or ricochet off bone. It wouldn’t kill neatly, if it killed at all.

He walked back to the range. This time he ignored the grey target marks. What were the most vulnerable parts of a user’s body? The chest seemed like a poor choice for the cage of bone that protected it. The limbs, likewise, were nonessential, but Rinzler supposed they would at least be useful targets for incapacitation. The belly below the ribs was soft, flesh and muscle and organs of unknown purpose. The two grey targets spoke of essential points. Rinzler supposed the gun was enough to negate the protection of bone. He aimed at the head target and the bullets punched a neat cluster through the center.

It was four steps back to the table. The spent magazine slid out into his hand. There was no need to pay attention to the process; he’d memorized it the first time. There was still blood under his nails, he realized, and his mind wandered back to the black guard. He’d called Rinzler a traitor. It still echoed in him. He didn’t know why. He fought for/served the users/Clu and-

He froze in place, staring at his hands as conflicting code ground against itself. The whisper of traitor caught on something inside him and started to unravel, but as it unraveled it only got bigger. It spread through him like a virus, turning him against himself. He couldn’t remember his orders. What was he supposed to be doing?

The unloaded gun clattered to the table. The soldier appeared at his side and frowned. “What are you-?”

Rational thought was gone. There was nothing but instinct now, and the soldier was unknown; Rinzler grabbed him by the arm and flipped him to the ground. He heard the wet snap of bone and the soldier’s sharp yelp. Blood roared in his ears. There was yelling from behind the glass but it was indistinct, nothing more than meaningless noise.

The gun was back in his hand. Click. Reload. Click. One-two-three, the targets are the head and heart.

There was blood on his shoes.

Things came back into place slowly, piece by piece. He was supposed to be practicing. He knew that much. Rinzler stepped over the soldier’s body and up to the range. He put three perfect shots into the target before being tackled to the ground.

**

Clu had a tiny little city spread out around him. There was time- too much time- between the programs they sent him to rectify, and he wondered when they’d run out. It had been a constant stream of footsoldiers in and out all day. It was playing havoc with his estimation of time. He’d already been here for a subjective week and a half. One of the programs they’d sent him had been a black guard. He was so battered and broken that Clu had gotten impatient messages for the time it had taken to knit him back together. What would they want with a program halfway to deresolution? He’d told them as much, and only got snippy responses in return. He supposed it was a lot easier for them to think of him as an object when they couldn’t see him face to face. Typing messages through a monitor, text only, wasn’t exactly personal.

The lightcycle he’d built was gathering figurative dust off to the side. He’d moved on from experimental architecture to a replica of his home on his grid; he couldn’t sit out in the nothingness all day. That was just depressing, and he had to keep himself occupied. Otherwise he was half sure he’d lose his mind. It didn’t help that the landscape was so barren. There was nothing to see that he didn’t make himself, and with no one else to talk to it bordered on maddening. If the system played host to anything besides him they were only background processes.

The relay ball pinged him. He ignored it for the moment; he had time. The users wouldn’t notice a small delay. With his eyes half shut, he could almost pretend that he was looking out on his city from a distance, except for the silence.

The relay pinged him again, more insistently this time, and Clu dug it out of his pocket with a sigh. Back to work. The only thing was that when he held it up, the message was get out here. Now.

“You could ask nicely,” Clu grumbled. He looked back on his time-filling projects. They’d be useless to a user as anything more than a curiosity, but something in him rebelled at leaving it all behind for them to pick through at their leisure. He knelt down and put his hand to the ground. He could feel the tug and flow of energy that connected everything he’d built, little golden threads sprouting out of the vast well of unused energy that swam just below the surface of the world. All he had to do was pull. It was a hard thing to do. They were his things, even if they were just buildings, nothing more than polygon shapes.

Maybe there was a time for letting go.

A sharp twist of his wrist broke the connections. He could see the last dregs of energy as they flowed into each structure in turn, and he saw the moment they ran out. They flickered and went dark one by one. Clu took the relay ball out of his pocket. He didn’t need it any more. It was heavy, and solid, and he wound up and threw it at the city. It punched a hole through a wall in a little shower of derezzed data. Then, in a wave, the whole thing started to crumble. Blue pixels fell in a cascade like glass. He watched his little city shatter, and closed his eyes. When he opened them again the system had reabsorbed the excess data. There was only the endless plain and the black sky.

He turned and walked to the I/O tower without a second glance. There was nothing behind him left to see. When he’d gone through- when he was flesh again- it took him a minute to get used to the heaviness of his limbs, and the constant thump of blood being pumped through his veins. He’d almost forgotten.

Montag was back. He looked… Furious, actually, and he was staring at Clu. The scientists were all standing around looking uneasy. Clu frowned. “What?”

“Follow me,” said Montag, and left without another word. Clu had no choice but to obey. His mind whirled through possibilities. He hadn’t done anything- well, nothing he was aware of- and the fact that as they left the room he seemed to suddenly pick up an entourage of men with guns wasn’t encouraging.

The room he was pushed into reminded him of the first few days he’d been here. Tiny, concrete and barren. There were a table and two chairs in the center of the room. All three were bolted to the floor. The hair on the back of Clu’s neck prickled. “I don’t know what you think I’ve done, but-“ He was pushed down into one of the chairs. His token struggle was barely worth it. Montag sat down across from him. He didn’t look furious anymore. It wasn’t that the anger was gone, exactly, it was just elsewhere. Clu watched him warily. 

Montag opened a laptop and set it on the table. The screen was taken up with a black and white still shot. The resolution was nothing amazing, and Clu couldn’t tell exactly what it was. “Got a little video of you here,” Montag leaned forward, “I think you’ll recognize it.”

He tapped a key. The still shot shuddered into motion and Clu realized what he was looking at. It was video shot from a high angle, and he was looking at himself looking into a mirror. His mouth twisted as he realized what was coming. “You sick-“

“Stop talking,” said Montag, and Clu’s mouth snapped shut. He was forced to watch in silence as black-and-white him stood there, and then Rinzler came in, and… Things escalated. Clu sank lower and lower in his chair. His face felt like it was on fire. This was humiliating. The only way it could be worse- well, he could think of a few ways it could be worse, actually, but putting any one of them into words was tempting fate. It was horrible enough as it was. When the video ended, instead of stopping, it just looped. Clu ground his teeth together until Montag finally saw fit to pause it. Montag tapped the keyboard again, and the image froze on Rinzler wrapped around Clu like he wanted to crawl inside his skin. Clu wanted to sink into the floor, and Montag set the laptop aside where it would remain in Clu’s full view. “Well?”

Clu’s tongue came unglued. His voice was low. “What do you mean, well?”

“First off, you’re fucking your officer there-“ Montag smiled nastily, “or maybe he’s fucking you. There was the part where he threw you into the wall. But that’s not important. You can fulfill whatever deviant homosexual relations you want in your spare time. I don’t care.”

“Then what’s this about? You just felt like sharing with the class?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Montag made an exaggerated show of apology, “I left the mute on, didn’t I?”

Clu watched in horror as Montag keyed up the volume, and started it over from the beginning. This time the sound was clear and crisp. When it got to the bit where Rinzler’s voice was a low threat and he was being choked it was too much. He couldn’t take going through it again, not in front of witnesses. Not in front of Montag. “All right, stop, stop. Turn it off.”

“Do you see it now?” He didn’t shut it off, and when the sound devolved into moans and wet gasps Clu scrambled for the machine to do it himself. Clu found himself restrained before he’d gotten halfway across the table, but Montag finally- finally- shut the laptop with a snap.

Clu struggled against the arms pinning him in place. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

“I was right on one count, at least. Kevin Flynn did make you, though what he wanted with an army… Maybe he wasn’t as altruistic as he seemed. But you thought you could do better.” Montag leaned back in his chair. “You betrayed Flynn,” he parroted, “betrayed us all. Sounds like Rinzler doesn’t like you so much, anymore.”

“It was an aberration. I told you he’d be unstable, but did you listen? No, of course not. You just knew better, didn’t you?”

“He shot one of my men this morning.”

Clu caught his breath, hissed through his teeth. It was worse than he’d thought. “If you’d just left it alone in the first place-” He stopped. No, wait a minute, there was something there that wasn’t right. Rinzler had shot someone? He couldn’t have wrestled a gun off a guard, he’d have been taken down well before that. Where had he…? Clu’s expression turned disbelieving. “Oh, you didn’t.”

Montag frowned, and that just made Clu surer. 

“You were testing him. You gave him a gun?” He felt laughter welling up in him. It wouldn’t help, but he couldn’t control it. The grin splitting his face was half-mad. They’d- how stupid were they? When he’d first woven Rinzler out of Tron, Clu hadn’t let him near a weapon until he was certain, absolutely certain he was stable. “You handed a weapon to someone I told you was going to glitch, and now you’re surprised that it blew up in your face? I can’t believe it. Well, actually I can, because it’s you.”

Montag’s expression didn’t change, and as Clu’s laughter subsided, the seriousness of the situation hit him. What were they going to do with Rinzler now? What had they done already? 

“Put him back in the grid with me. I can fix him if you’ll just let me take out what you made me put in-“

“You’re a liar.”

Clu’s face froze. “What?”

“You heard me,” Montag leaned in, “I thought the patch was going well, but apparently not well enough. You lied to us, Clu. You shouldn’t be able to do that.”

“I’ve answered all your questions!”

“You’ve sidestepped them,” said Montag, “you said Rinzler couldn’t speak. What else are you hiding?”

This was just getting worse. He should have refused to leave the grid and lived alone in there forever; it would have been better than this. “I never said he couldn’t, but he doesn’t. I’ve seen him go literal-“ cycles, he thought, and substituted his words, “-years without a single word coming out of his mouth.”

“Lies of omission.”

“It’s not-“ Clu grit his teeth. “Look. It doesn’t matter. Whatever you’re thinking of doing, don’t bother. I can fix the code if you’ll just let me.”

Montag shook his head. At a gesture, the laptop was being packed away and Clu was dragged to his feet. “I think our working relationship has come to an end, for the time being.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Clu glared at them men holding him. Montag didn’t say a thing, only gestured to the door. He was being led out before he knew what was happening. He dug in his heels and fought. “Where’s Rinzler? What did you do with him?”

“He’s a danger.”

That, unaccountably, stirred up something like panic in him. Were they going to derezz Rinzler? Had it already happened? No, no, that couldn’t be it- if Rinzler was dead Montag would be rubbing it in his face, not just making insinuations. There had to be something else, something he was missing. “He wouldn’t be a danger if you’d listened to me in the first place! Where is he?”

Montag looked at him narrowly. “I’ve heard enough of your voice today. Gentlemen, if you would? And you,” he smiled at Clu unpleasantly, “cooperate. I wouldn’t want to have to do anything unfortunate.”

They manhandled him down the hall. He half thought they’d take him back to the room they’d taken him from, or just toss him in another cell, but instead he was ferried back to the motor pool. He wanted to shout, to struggle, but apparently the patch didn’t think that was very cooperative of him. When he tried it was all he could do to keep his footing, and as much as he wanted to fight, he wasn’t sure he could deal with the humiliation of falling on his face on top of everything else.

Soon enough he was in a car, and then on the road, and then back at their new, soft-edged prison. When he got out of the car he had the wild thought to just run, before the gate closed; he didn’t know where he’d go, or what he’d do, but it would be better than this, wouldn’t it? His fate back in his control, if only for a short time?

The gate clanged shut. He’d missed his chance. There was nowhere to go but inside, and he didn’t spare a glance for Pola as he passed her desk. The door into the courtyard banged against the wall as he threw it open. When he stormed into their rooms he slammed the door behind him. Home sweet home.

A startled Jarvis nearly knocked the scuffed-up laptop off the counter. “You’re back, sir?” He said, and then frowned. “Where’s Rinzler?”

Clu glared at him. The other program flinched back like the look was hot enough to melt steel. Something cutting was on the tip of Clu’s tongue but at the last minute he lost his enthusiasm for it. He wouldn’t give the cameras the satisfaction of seeing him throw a tantrum. “The users have him.”

Jarvis set the laptop carefully to the side, where it wouldn’t be knocked onto the floor. “I’m not sure I understand.”

“Well, he killed a man today, so there’s that.” Clu threw himself down onto the couch and kicked off his shoes savagely. “And we’re under surveillance. Did you know? Cameras in every room, probably. Full audio.” He raised his voice. “Am I talking loud enough? Did you pick that up?”

“But we serve the users now.” Jarvis eyed the walls. Still, he looked mystified. “Why did he do it?”

“Because they don’t know what they’re doing. You hear that, Montag? It’s your fault. Yours. You think that’s a lie? It’s not.”

Jarvis was quiet for long enough that the silence felt thick enough to cut. Finally he broke it. “What are they going to do to him?”

And that was the thing- the worst of it, really. Clu could picture any number of things happening, none of them pleasant. None of them things he wanted to be picturing. “I don’t know.”


	9. Chapter 9

Days passed. There were no more early-morning calls. No one came to fetch them for anything. Jarvis didn’t mind the downtime at first, but it was getting harder and harder to stay optimistic. Clu didn’t do well with captivity, and when that was added to the fact that Rinzler’s fate was still unknown, it became all Jarvis could do to just stay out of Clu’s way. For the first couple of days he’d been focused. Clu had paced and planned, but that had fallen by the wayside. The longer the isolation dragged on the more Jarvis found Clu breaking things just because they were there or ranting at thin air- to the cameras, presumably. Jarvis couldn’t deny that the knowledge that they were constantly being watched made for easy paranoia. Ever since Clu had pointed out the one camera they knew of, a tiny black lens the size of his thumbnail embedded in the corner of the bathroom up near the ceiling, Jarvis had kept his eye out for others. He hadn’t found any yet.

Clu had tried destroying the camera. He’d taken a pen and jammed it into the lens until it spat sparks. It didn’t make a difference. Somehow, between one day and another, the thing was repaired as good as new. Clu spent a good hour after discovering it getting ever more creative with spitting abuse at the camera, the camera’s maker, Montag, and users in general. Jarvis felt a little sorry for whichever grunt was tasked with monitoring the feeds. Not very sorry, true, but they probably had as little to do with the whole business as Jarvis himself had had to do with some of Clu’s more… Ambitious schemes.

That wasn’t to say things were a hundred percent awful. He was getting used to how the user world worked, and their kitchen held a respectable stock of food. (Jarvis had been aware from the first moment he’d cooked that the continuing supply of food would fall on him, but that was always the way. Clu didn’t have the patience for small things, and Rinzler, when it came to things that weren’t direct orders or an opportunity to show off, was unbelievably lazy. Of course, that wasn’t relevant now. He hoped for Rinzler’s return if only because it would calm Clu down.)

The laptop had proved useful, in a way. It had a connection to a massive user network. A lot of it was blocked off, but the open parts were fascinating. He couldn’t even begin to imagine what he could have accomplished if they’d had access to it all along. He tried to imagine it from the inside. What would it be like, not to have a grid in isolation? How would their own grid have changed with the extra connection? Either way, Jarvis still wasn’t sure how he felt about using a computer from the outside. It was weird to think of his keystrokes filtering down to the rank and file programs like words from on high.

It had all started to go downhill when he found Wikipedia. He couldn’t help it; information aggregation was one of his primary functions. Most of it was useless. A good chunk was downright incomprehensible. User culture was bizarre. The bits that were useful were often even stranger. He’d spent hours trying to puzzle out the concepts of planets and animals and chemistry. The discovery that the sun, as far as he knew a more or less benign source of light and heat, was in fact a vast and self-perpetuating thermonuclear explosion a million miles across had left him with a short-lived terror of going outside. No wonder it hurt to look at. How were users alive at all? 

He’d tried to explain it to Clu. Clu hadn’t believed him.

Wikipedia’s color scheme, black and blue on grey, made him picture a siren. He took to calling her Ms. Wikipedia in his head. It made him feel a little less uneasy about being a user in all but name. At first he’d hoped to find an image of Wikipedia’s user to solidify the picture in his mind. As he read more about its technical underpinnings, that idea shattered. Wikipedia had fourteen million users and spanned six and a half gigabytes all on its own. The shape that came to mind, unbidden, was something huge and elegant but also curved in on itself, multifaceted shapes packed into dense layers that couldn’t quite be seen. He pushed it out of his mind and replaced it resolutely with a simpler image, maybe the siren that had seemed to spend half her time around End of Line. It made him less afraid of what he might be talking to.

When he couldn’t take close quarters with Clu anymore, Jarvis retreated to the courtyard, sat under his tree and read about philosophy, or mythology, or watched videos of cats on youtube. Users seemed preoccupied with the things. He wasn’t sure why, they didn’t seem very useful. Then again, users weren’t the most logical creatures. There was also an extensive library of videos of users falling down or otherwise injuring themselves. He didn’t pretend to understand it. 

That was where he was a week and a half later, sick of dealing with Clu by himself, when Rinzler came back.

Jarvis heard the courtyard door open and looked up to see someone walking through. The sun was in his eyes but he’d recognize that profile anywhere, mostly for reasons of self-preservation. Jarvis shut the laptop with a snap. 

“Rinzler?” 

The door swung shut and Rinzler looked around appraisingly. His gaze slid right over Jarvis. Jarvis stood and brushed bits of grass off his knees. He tucked the laptop under one arm and shaded his eyes with the other.

“Where have you been? What happened? Clu’s been losing his mind.”

Rinzler ignored him and made for the stairs. That… All right, that wasn’t entirely unexpected, but he thought he’d get more of a reaction than that. Jarvis followed Rinzler up the stairs. As he saw Rinzler in motion he frowned. There was something a little off about him. Rinzler had always been graceful. Even if they’d never exactly been friends, he could admit that. It was obvious to anyone with eyes. That grace was still there, but now it seemed to lack purpose. Jarvis supposed it could be exhaustion; there was also the matter of how Rinzler kept glancing from thing to thing, his gaze never really settling. That just made Jarvis frown harder.

He could hear Clu’s voice as they approached their door. He was midway through another rant, and Jarvis sighed and didn’t even bother registering what he was saying. It all got a bit repetitive after a while. The door opening cut him off mid-rant. Clu whirled around to glare at him. “Jarvis, I-“

Jarvis could almost physically see the anger dissipate. Clu’s face went from cabin-fever-induced fury to something else, in a heartbeat. The brief flash of emotion was too dense for Jarvis to pick apart. Then it was gone, and the entire focus of Clu’s attention was on Rinzler. “What did they do? Are you damaged?”

Rinzler’s answer was a low thrum of a purr. He took the half-step forward it took to get inside Clu’s personal space, pressed himself up against Clu, and laid his head on the other program’s shoulder. Clu’s hands hovered in midair like he didn’t know what to do with them. Jarvis raised an eyebrow, and the baffled look on Clu’s face would’ve been funny in other circumstances, but Jarvis was sure that showing any sign of amusement would have unfortunate consequences.

Clu looked at Jarvis over Rinzler’s shoulder. “When did he get here?”

“Just now, sir.”

“And what…” Clu’s eyebrows knit together. “What exactly is he doing?”

Jarvis frowned as Rinzler straightened up, and then walked the few feet to a couch where he flopped down, curled up and seemed to immediately fall asleep. “I have no idea, sir.” Maybe the oddness was just exhaustion? He didn’t know. User processes were always hidden. He could only guess at reasons. “…Why did they bring him back?” 

“Excuse me?” Clu snapped, and Jarvis held up his hands defensively. 

“Not that, ah, I don’t want Rinzler here. It’s just a bit suspicious, isn’t it, sir?” A thrashing, verbal or otherwise didn’t seem to be forthcoming, and Jarvis lowered his hands a little. “They took him away because of unstable code. Now they put him back. It follows that either they’ve fixed the code, or they, well.”

Clu had gone quiet and considering. He looked down at Rinzler. “Or what?”

“Or they haven’t fixed a thing, and they gave him back just to see what happens.”

**

Clu kept an eye on Rinzler while he slept. What had the users done? It had to be something, he was sure of that, but what? Not for the first time he cursed the limitations of user bodies. They were meat and skin, and if there was a way to change them without doing damage he hadn’t found it. He couldn’t even see the differences. How did they live like that? Everything was surfaces. How did they ever know anything for certain? He wanted to peel Rinzler down to the core of him and see what they’d done for himself. It was a bad idea, but his fingertips itched with the irritation of not knowing. He wanted to comb through code and bring Rinzler back to the ideal he’d worked him into so long ago, into perfection. For now, all he could do was guess.

When Rinzler finally returned to the waking world he looked a little better. More focused. Clu sat down beside him and inspected him closely- how he held himself, the way his pupils contracted when he looked at the lights. It was more to assuage his own frustration than anything. Rinzler looked the same as he ever had, and if there were surface changes he couldn’t see them. Rinzler bore it patiently, and the first thing he did when let go was pick up the black helmet he’d left on a side table days ago and put it on. His purr was constant and steady. Clu took that as a good sign. 

“What did they do to you?” 

Rinzler’s purr turned almost- apologetic? 

“This is no time to…” Clu’s eyes narrowed. Suspicion welled up in him. “Say something. Say my name.”

The apologetic purr deepened.

“…You can’t speak.” 

It wasn’t a question. Rinzler’s slow head-shake only confirmed it. The fury that had built in him over the last week came back with a vengeance. Clu surged to his feet and kicked over the coffee table. One of its legs folded under it with a satisfying crunch. He kicked it a few more times just because it made him feel a little better. Wood splintered. Whether or not that was the real intent of what they’d done- he doubted it, silence wasn’t exactly useful- he knew, down to the core of his being, that Rinzler’s muteness was a strike directly against him from Montag. He had no doubt that the man would consider it a sufficiently ironic punishment for withholding information.

He looked up to see Jarvis watching him from across the room. His fury found a new target. “What?”

“…Nothing, sir.”

“Well you’ve obviously got something to say. Spit it out, why don’t you?” Clu stalked up to him. Jarvis was brave enough not to retreat, but he still leaned away when Clu got within striking distance.

“I don’t-“

“Come on,” Clu snarled, “don’t be shy, now.” He grabbed Jarvis by his collar and shoved him up against the counter. Jarvis didn’t fight it, and somehow that just made Clu angrier. “What is it?” Clu shook him and Jarvis made a choked sound. “Answer me, program!”

“I wasn’t going to- hh-“ Jarvis cut off as Clu bent him backwards over the counter. He pushed down harder, and Jarvis’ fist came out of nowhere. There was pain in Clu’s jaw, and Jarvis twisted out of his grip. Jarvis stumbled a few feet away and then they just stared at each other, Clu in mounting confusion and Jarvis in horror, looking like he expected to be executed at any moment.

Clu raised a hand to touch the underside of his jaw. “…Did you just hit me?”

“I. Ah.” Jarvis rubbed at his throat and looked hunted. “Maybe?”

Jarvis. Jarvis had hit him. Clu never thought he’d see the day. It even hurt. Where had his loyal programs gone? What had happened to those long cycles of nothing but order and respect? Was his carefully cultivated hierarchy so easily lost? He advanced on Jarvis. “Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

“It won’t help!” Jarvis blurted out.

“What won’t?”

“Taking it out on me, or Rinzler, or- or the table,” Jarvis stuttered. He looked half terrified and half determined, like he was so certain he’d be derezzed in the next five minutes that he didn’t care anymore. “You can kill me and it won’t matter, because it won’t change anything. You’ll still be here. You’ll still have the same problems you do now.”

When he stopped talking, the place was silent but for background noise. The hum of the refrigerator. The whine of electricity in the walls. Rinzler’s low and constant rumble. Jarvis tensed up as Clu approached, but didn’t try to run. Clu waited to see if he’d flinch, but he didn’t. Jarvis waited determinedly, like a man resolved to stare his death in the face. Clu couldn’t reconcile that look with Jarvis. The rage had long since bled away in the face of the absurdity of the situation, and all he could do was shake his head. He clapped Jarvis on the shoulder and Jarvis looked like he might just jump out of his skin. “Congratulations.”

“For… For what, sir?” Jarvis squeaked.

“Growing that spine.” Clu walked away. He needed to think. “Don’t do it again.”

Behind him, Jarvis slid down to sit on the floor. Jarvis had really thought Clu was going to kill him. That gave him pause. He was a benevolent leader, surely? Certainly there were measures that he took that sometimes went above and beyond what was strictly necessary, but he preferred reprogramming to execution, and those he disposed of almost always deserved it. Sometimes executions were due to simple time constraints, and surely he couldn’t be blamed for that?

He walked into the bedroom he’d claimed as his, closed the door and sat on the bed. Jarvis’ reaction had stirred up an uneasy thought in him. His people were loyal to him, he knew that. For many of them he’d seen the code that spelled that out explicitly. But how much of that loyalty had been out of fear instead of love? How many of them followed his orders only because they were afraid not to? How many programs would turn on him if given half a chance?

That night, Clu woke from an uneasy sleep. He wasn’t sure why, at first, and lay still. As he did, he became aware of a low whisper, barely there. He could hear someone breathing. Close by. Clu opened his eye the tiniest sliver, and the jolt that went through him felt like his heart was going to explode out of his chest. For a few seconds he could barely think for the adrenaline. Rinzler loomed over him, a dark shadow that looked twice as big as he really was. Clu didn’t move a muscle. What was he doing? Had he noticed Clu was awake? Why was he here? More importantly, he wasn’t purring. 

Clu didn’t want to do or say anything. Rinzler didn’t move, and Clu lay there long enough to feel a bead of sweat make its slow way down the side of his head, around his ear and down his neck, and nothing. Rinzler didn’t move a muscle. There was only the low, steady rasp of his breathing.

“Rinzler,” Clu finally hissed, “what are you doing?”

There was no answer. Rinzler didn’t even seem to have heard him, and Clu sat up slowly. In the dim spill of light that leaked in through his window he could see the outline of Rinzler’s face. Rinzler had left the helmet somewhere, and that was odd enough, but his expression was blank. His eyes were distant and dull. He stood there like an empty shell and Clu felt a spike of a different kind of fear. Maybe all they’d done was tear most of his coding out, leaving just enough to keep him alive and give him a bit of his personality. Maybe this was a shoddy copy and the real Rinzler was still in captivity somewhere. Maybe- no, he couldn’t start to think that way. He’d know if Rinzler was a fake, he was sure of it. There were more important things at the moment.

He touched Rinzler’s face and thought he got a flicker of a reaction. “Rinzler?”

After a long moment, the purr started up again, quiet and low but there. It took a little longer for any sense of animation to come back into Rinzler’s features. He looked lost, and made a questioning noise.

“Don’t look at me,” said Clu, “I don’t know what you were doing either. For future reference, I don’t appreciate being watched in my sleep.” 

Rinzler made a low sound like laughter. Clu realized he was still touching Rinzler’s cheek. The question was, really, what had Rinzler been doing at all? Did he remember coming here? Even if he put the blank stare aside, it didn’t make sense.

“I’m glad you think it’s so funny.”

Rinzler surged forward and Clu tensed before realizing it wasn’t an assault. Instead Rinzler dragged him back down into the sheets and curled up in the pocket of heat he’d left behind. They were tangled together, Rinzler’s face pressed up somewhere beside his ear. Clu could feel the vibration of the purr through his ribcage. He let his hand come to rest on Rinzler’s shoulder, and the other program didn’t seem to have any intention of moving.

He waited for this to go wrong, as everything else seemed to, but eventually Rinzler’s breathing evened out and Clu could only assume he was asleep. It was… Sort of pleasant, actually. Warm. Rinzler’s hair brushed against his ear and Clu twisted his neck just enough to look down on him. Rinzler’s face, slack in sleep, made him think so much of Tron that he had to clamp down on the flood of distant memories. There was a time before everything had been so complicated, but it was so long ago it almost seemed unreal. Dreamlike. He leaned in on impulse and pressed a kiss to the corner of Rinzler’s mouth. He drew back. He wasn’t sure why he’d done it. 

A thought drifted into his head and he eyed the walls. Could the cameras see them? The recording he’d seen was black and white, and low quality. The dark would be too much for it, or at least he hoped so. Even so, he threw the sheet over the both of them and spent the time until he fell asleep watching Rinzler, and wondering how it had all come to this.

**

Again, they were left with time on their hands. Clu thought the following day might bring a call, or an order, or anything, really, but they were left to their own devices.

It took Jarvis two days to fully relax around him again. It annoyed him a little, but there was nothing to do with that annoyance that didn’t end up looping around on him and making Clu wonder if it had been like this all along. There had always been little flaws in his system, and he kept working them out, but there was always some new small crisis to deal with and for the first time he wondered if any of that was on him. He’d tried to control everything and he’d nearly succeeded, but maybe some things didn’t respond well to meddling. Were there things he should have left well enough alone, to work themselves out?

He still wasn’t sure what they’d done to Rinzler. Since that first night he’d slipped into that half-catatonic state twice more. It was never for very long, and he never failed to break out of it, but Clu was starting to work up a theory. For a few seconds before it started, Rinzler would get this look that might be confused or intent or any number of things, and he’d look like he was about to do something, and then he’d just… Stop. Like he’d been shut down. That was the key, Clu thought. What if, instead of fixing Rinzler, they’d only hidden the problem? 

Every time his programming conflicted with itself it forced a crash. Maybe a soft reboot. It was a lazy fix. Maybe they couldn’t do any better. Maybe they were just waiting to see if it would hold, or if Rinzler would overcome it and break Clu’s neck.

There still wasn’t anything to do in the meantime. With Rinzler back he couldn’t work up the momentum to rant at the cameras anymore. The days were unchanging, and Clu realized, to his horror, that he was getting used to it. He was getting used to this place, and this life, and his world being a little bubble of space that might as well have been on the moon for how much he was able to interact with the world outside it. Pacing the length of the courtyard only served to make his world feel smaller. He wanted to knock down the walls and leave, just leave. He didn’t know where he’d go.

The lack of diversions meant that he was treated to a series of increasingly bizarre scenarios. He’d walked in on Jarvis and Rinzler having an emphatic discussion on the motivations of the characters in a user entertainment program he’d been informed was called a soap opera- well, he called it a discussion. It was Jarvis’ speculations on one side and Rinzler’s growls and purrs on the other. Either way he listened just long enough to hear evil twin and billionaire and love child before just turning around and leaving. It wasn’t worth his trouble. 

He caught Rinzler in the courtyard practicing his disk-throwing with something round, green and plastic. It flew well enough but obviously wasn’t a weapon. It seemed more like a toy, and was too light for any kind of ricochet. At least he got to see Jarvis’ agitation at the one-man game being played around him. It was good for a few hours’ entertainment. Less entertaining was a few days later, when Jarvis had excitedly tried to tell Clu about the intricacies of user reproduction in a biological detail that he was sure was now burned into his brain forever. Jarvis had brought the laptop. It had diagrams and descriptions and god help him video, and he never even wanted to consider where user children came from again.

He still wasn’t sure he believed him about cell division. It was just disgusting enough to be true, but almost as absurd as the earlier bit about the sun.

The tree in the courtyard started putting out leaves, tiny little yellow-green things. Clu started to see red-shelled insects in the corners or sunning themselves on outside walls. They reminded him of gridbugs in miniature. He was careful not to smash a single one; if they caused problems for the users, so much the better. He was bored enough that he helped Jarvis with the cooking once and exactly once. It had been disastrous, and he’d leave it at that.

It was another week before their phone rang again. Clu cursed himself for how happy he was to finally have something to do. When he set foot outside their gilded cage it was like being able to breathe freely for the first time in weeks, even if the open air only extended between them and the car. The world outside looked a little different than it had before. More green, less grey and brown. As if the world was coming out of some kind of torpor. 

Soon enough they were being hurried out of the car and away, and he stopped thinking about it. Open sky was supplanted by concrete corridors and fluorescent lighting. They led the three of them into the bowels of the place. It had become familiar by now, all of it. The nondescript corridors, the nondescript people, and even the room they were led to. Then there was the laser, the computers, the scientists- Clu curled his lip in contempt. And Hellard and Montag. How nice, his two favorite people in the world.

“I saw the work you did on Rinzler,” Clu said without preamble, “stopgap and crude. That’s quite a record you’ve got going for you.”

Montag shook his head. He looked amused. “You never stop talking, do you?”

“I don’t know, do you ever stop being a smug idiot?”

Montag still had that hint of a smile on his face. Something prickled in the back of Clu’s mind. There was something going on here, something under the surface. He didn’t know what it might be. “And still with that mouth. That’s going to get you into trouble, someday.”

“What a nice change. At least then you’ll finally have cause to do whatever it is that you do, instead of only feeding your power fantasies.”

“Fantasies?” Montag made a slight gesture and Rinzler punched Clu in the ribs. It was nothing, nothing like being hit by Jarvis. The air left his lungs in a rush. It was a fireball in his chest. He heard bones crack- his ribs, or Rinzler’s hands- and he sank to his knees gasping. 

“Sir!” Jarvis yelped, and Clu wasn’t sure whether that was directed at Montag or him. Suddenly this had gotten a whole lot less routine.

“You bastard,” Clu spat, “you inbred son of a whore-“

“Been watching TV, have you? At least it’s a more dignified insult than users this, users that.” Montag loomed over him. “I don’t think you’ve ever really appreciated your position, here. The work we did on Rinzler was quite elegant, given the constraints.” He grabbed Clu’s chin and forced him to look up. Clu wanted to sink his teeth into that hand but couldn’t make his body follow orders. “The bit that shuts him off when he’s unstable was a little haphazard, I’ll admit, but the rest of it? Beautiful. We’ll put him to much better use than you did, but don’t worry. You can be useful, too.”

“What did you do?” 

Montag’s grin was razor sharp. “Couldn’t have done it without you.”

Hands closed around Clu’s upper arms. “Let go of me!” 

Rinzler dragged Clu to the laser, kicking and fighting past the compulsion not to, and bound him in place by his wrists. Jarvis was pushed into place beside him. They were going to send them through together. They’d learned they could do that at some point, Clu supposed.

Jarvis’ voice was small and quiet. “What do we do, sir?”

Clu choked back bitter laughter. He didn’t know. What could he do? Things had been so out of hand for so long that he didn’t even know where to begin. Rinzler watched the proceedings from Montag’s side. Clu swore he saw, just for a second, a flash of vindictive glee on his face that could only be Tron. Clu bared his teeth. In that instant the laser activated with a whine, and then they were on the grid. Clu knew from the very first moment he came into existence there that it was all wrong. It wasn’t the open black expanse of the last time. It was the tiny white box.

He… Knew what was coming, somehow. Everything had led up to this. When the ceiling was torn open and he heard Jarvis’ shocked gasp, Clu shut his eyes. Bowed his head. There was a cut-off scream and the whir and scrape of the thing that wasn’t a user or a program, and still he didn’t move. Eventually the sound stopped, and Clu had just enough time to think so this is it, then, before it turned on him.

It didn’t hurt, but he felt like it should have.


	10. Chapter 10

Five months. Two weeks. Three days. Six hours.

Clu didn’t know why he kept the tally running in his head. It wasn’t of any significance that he knew of, but some small part of him kept counting. Every minute, every second, was added up and added on. It felt like a little part of him was someone else, sometimes, someone meaner and sleeker and more vicious. Maybe everyone felt that way- that they held little bits of other people, leftover people they’d been a lifetime ago.

He shook it off. He had work to do. There was a series of plans and instructions arrayed across his desk. Normally his job was simply to help refine the rectification process. Under his instruction the tech group had gotten it down to minutes to completely reformat a program with a whole new suite of abilities and proficiencies, and Clu was justifiably proud of the level of detail he’d achieved. The rest of the papers were lists of positions and aerial views for battles he wasn’t sure really existed. Montag had discovered his skill with tactics and began slipping him bits and pieces to see what he could come up with. Clu didn’t mind it, but things like that were better handled by Jarvis. Clu didn’t have the patience for strategy he couldn’t involve himself in.

He’d spend his day there, working, and then he’d go home and take off his suit and the next day would be the same, and the one after that, and the one after that. He’d asked for permission to learn to drive so he could stop waiting on the motor pool, but the request had been denied. Something about licensing and legal citizenship. Jarvis would wait with him, and Clu would look at the riot of green growth in the gutters and feel the heat in the air and some part of him would respond with a flicker of disgust. It always passed. The trip home would be uneventful and maybe Rinzler would be there, and maybe he wouldn’t. He was missing a lot, these days. When he was there, though, he was affectionate enough that Jarvis had more than once walked out complaining that he had to eat on that table, thanks, but that was all right. That same little part of him liked needling Jarvis, and Jarvis always took it with rolled eyes and a long-suffering sigh.

He saw one of the footsoldiers (his footsoldiers, something insisted in the back of his mind) on the news one night, just for a split second in the background of a shot. It was a story on a war, somewhere in the desert. He was proud to see his handiwork in action, but it unsettled him all night and he didn’t know why.

But things were good. Things were fine, and he had everything he needed, and if sometimes he found himself digging his nails into his palms so hard they bled or if sometimes Rinzler went still and dead for minutes at a time- that still happened rarely, but he couldn’t remember why- and something drove him to catalogue the cameras in the walls and sometimes he couldn’t sleep at night for the feeling that someone was screaming at him from down inside a deep well, then that was fine. That was fine too.

Wasn’t it?

**

One sunny morning, instead of his usual pickup, Montag himself was waiting at the gates with a second car. Clu blinked in surprise. That was unusual. Most times he saw Montag once a week, if that. He was sure the man had more important things to do than talk to him, but Clu smiled anyway. “Good morning. Didn’t expect to see you here, General.”

“What can I say,” said Montag, “call it a field trip. You’ve got the day off work.”

That had never happened before. Clu cocked his head to the side. “What’s the occasion?”

“A little meeting. How do you feel about the commercial sector?”

“I don’t know. How should I feel?”

Montag laughed at that, like he’d made a joke, but Clu didn’t quite follow. That happened, sometimes. Clu always wondered what it was that he was missing. “Get in. Don’t worry, you won’t have to do much. You’re more of a visual aid than anything, but there’ll be free coffee.” Clu wrinkled his nose as he climbed into the car. He’d never liked coffee. Too bitter. 

“That’s not much of a bribe.”

“Well they’ve probably got tea, too.”

Clu shrugged. Caffeine was all well and good, but he hadn’t yet had a good cup of tea that he hadn’t made himself. Or that Jarvis had made, but ninety percent of the time Jarvis took coffee over anything else. It didn’t seem complicated, and he couldn’t understand how so many people managed to do it so badly. Was boiling water so hard? “Where are we going?”

“Downtown. You’ll know it when you see it, I think.”

The car smelled of new leather and plastic. It couldn’t be more than a few weeks old, and Clu rubbed his thumb against the seatback idly. It was soft and supple. Probably expensive. He dug his thumbnail in and it left a jagged dent. As soon as he realized what he was doing he pulled his hand away. He hoped Montag hadn’t seen that. He didn’t know what came over him sometimes.

Outside, the buildings they passed got taller and taller until it was like driving through the bottom of a canyon. He’d never been downtown before. They gave him time outside the compound, but he was never allowed to go far. Somehow, though, the buildings struck a spark of recognition in him and he wondered what they’d look like against a black sky. He realized that the skyline was familiar. Pieces of it, at least. It was the same as his old grid. Flynn must have built it with this city in mind, and-

He snatched his hand away from the upholstery. He was digging at it again.

When they stopped, it was in front of a black, glassy building with a white stripe up the side that made him think of grid architecture. He squinted at the logo at the top. It was in capital letters that must have been a storey high at least: ENCOM. That was… Familiar. He knew that name. Why?

He was ushered in before he had a chance to think about it. Inside the doors was a busy atrium, open from the first floor to at least the twelfth. It let sunlight stream down and fill the building from top to bottom. He craned his neck. The balcony edges were tiered above him like a wedding cake. Modern art hung from the ceiling, and part of the west wall was an elegantly-textured cascade of greenery and miniature waterfalls. Clu had the strangest sense of déjà vu. He’d never been here before, he was sure of that, but something about the place, whether it was the shape of the room or just the sense of the building, whispered to him. There was a dim flicker of memory as he passed a door that opened onto a room full of cubicles, but he wasn’t sure it was his own. And people kept looking at him. Not staring, but some of them would do a quick double take as they passed. It made the hair stand up on the back of his neck.

“You still with me?”

Clu’s train of thought was broken. He shook his head. “What? No. I mean- yes. I was distracted.” Montag cocked an eyebrow, and Clu shrugged. “I haven’t been sleeping well. I’m just tired.”

“Nothing serious, I hope?” The elevator call button lit up under Montag’s hand.

“It’s nothing.”

The elevator arrived with a muffled ding. They stepped on, and Clu leaned against the back of the car while the doors closed. The TV in the corner of the ceiling was predicting a completely hideous temperature for tomorrow, and Clu grimaced. He wasn’t looking forward to the ordeal that was summer heat plus a suit. He wondered, sometimes, if he could be posted to somewhere colder. Clu hated the feeling of his clothes sticking to him, the dampness of the back of his neck and knees, and the way he could smell himself after only a few hours. Air conditioning was probably the user invention he was most grateful for.

The elevator came to a stop. Clu followed Montag out. He put his hand on the railing and looked down. They were well above the entrance atrium now, the floors below them stepped and each jutting out a little farther than the next. The people below looked so much less significant from here. “Who are we meeting?”

“A select few,” Montag smiled secretively, “but an important few.”

Clu frowned. “I thought boardrooms were usually on the top floor.”

“It’s not really a boardroom situation.”

He had no idea what that was supposed to mean, but he followed Montag down a twisting network of corridors anyway. They came to a set of heavy double doors, and Montag knocked twice, two sharp impacts with the back of his knuckles. The door opened a moment later.

“General Montag! Good morning. Glad to see you made it.” The man was in- maybe his forties, Clu hadn’t yet gotten the hang of judging user ages. He wore a finely tailored suit, and his mouth was set in a white, white smile that seemed to have too many teeth. He exuded charisma like a physical force. Clu hated him on sight. “Come in, come in. We were just getting started.”

Montag nodded. “Mr. Hardington. I brought along a guest. I trust that won’t cause problems?”

Hardington’s smile flickered for just a moment. “With all due respect, this isn’t exactly an open meeting.”

“Call it a product demonstration, then.” Montag waved Clu forward. “Clu, this is Kurt Hardington, Encom’s CEO. Mr. Hardington, this is Clu.”

Clu stepped around the open door. He watched as Hardington’s eyes went huge, and that smile dropped off his face. There was a long pause where Hardington seemed to have forgotten how to speak, and then he closed his mouth and cleared his throat. “This is one of your… Subjects?”

“Subject one, in fact.”

“Unbelievable,” Hardington shook his head. His smile bloomed back into place. “He’s a dead ringer. For a second there I thought you’d raised Kevin Flynn from the dead.”

“I thought you’d be impressed.”

But Flynn wasn’t dead, Clu thought, he was just… Elsewhere. He guessed that thirty years was enough time to write someone off. He’d learned, a little, about user lifespans. He wondered if, with a flesh and blood body, he’d also age and die in time. Dying like that, in slow degradation, was anathema to him. As long as he had access to a grid, any grid, he could be fixed. He just had to account for the errors that seemed to crop up minute by minute in a biological system. There had to be a way around it. Organics were so inefficient, everything in a constant cycle of consumption, always in a state of war-

“Clu.”

Clu blinked. His mind had been wandering. Montag jerked his head at the open door and walked through. Clu followed. It was a meeting room, smaller than he’d expected, with a bank of windows on one side and a long table that took up almost the entire space. The only people there were himself, Montag, Hardington and a young man Clu didn’t recognize. He was giving Clu a decidedly odd look. He didn’t know the man, but there was something about his facial structure that pinged something deep in Clu’s memories. Something so old he barely remembered it, and might not have been his to begin with. He frowned. 

The man tore his gaze away. “General,” he nodded to Montag.

“This is Edward Dillinger Jr.,” said Hardington, “His father used to do a little contracting for DARPA. I don’t think you’ve ever met Edward here in person- he’s a real young up-and-comer in this business, and he’s been instrumental in decrypting those files you’ve been sending us.” During his little speech he’d wandered over behind Dillinger’s chair and clapped him on the shoulder. Dillinger looked uncomfortable. “Couldn’t have done it without him.”

Dillinger shrugged off the hand as soon as he was able. “Please, call me Ed. Edward is my father’s name.” Montag picked a seat at the table, and Clu followed suit. Dillinger was back to watching him, and Clu met his gaze until Dillinger looked away and cleared his throat. “Did I hear right a moment ago? Is this a… Prototype?”

Clu’s voice fell into the sardonic drawl that popped up in him from time to time. “I have a name, you know.”

“Always had a bit of an attitude, this one,” Montag smiled, “He is. At this stage of negotiations I felt it was better that you see the efficacy of the process for yourselves. Whatever the original purpose of Flynn’s army, they’ve proved suited for any number of tasks. The military sector is already reaping the benefits. As our partners through the process, we feel that Encom is the place to begin in the commercial sector.”

“Any number of tasks?” Echoed Hardington.

Dillinger leaned forward. “Theoretically, they could be reworked to fulfill any niche the human body is capable of. Am I right?” Montag nodded sharply.

“Theoretically. We’ve got some of the software hammered out, but anything especially specialized will take time to implement. The other limiting factor is pure numbers. Our stock of warm bodies isn’t limitless, but copies are possible.”

Hardington looked thoughtful. “It might be best to look into product lines. Pick a handful of good-looking ones and reproduce those? There’s the marketing side of things, too. Too much variety will scare people. They’ll want to know what these things look like.”

Clu felt a spike of rage toward Hardington that disappeared as quickly as it came, and left him bewildered. What was wrong with him today? Sometimes he felt like he was losing his mind. There was a pressure, not quite pain, building up behind his eyes, and he felt like- he didn’t know how he felt. That contrary little piece of him was sitting up and screaming pay attention, idiot at the top of its lungs. He tried to ignore it. Listening to any impulses it put forward tended to end badly.

He did as best he could in the meeting, but not much was asked of him. As Montag had said, all he had to do was be there and look pretty. Eventually the meeting came to an end. Clu kept himself under control. Hands were shaken and too-wide smiles exchanged. Dillinger still seemed uncomfortable with the whole thing, and Clu wondered if there were users that thought this was a bad idea as well. He was whisked away before he found the time to ask.

He went back to his life. The loud and unhappy piece of him quieted down, until some days he could hardly hear it at all. Sometimes he almost found himself missing it, like a phantom limb he wasn’t sure he’d ever had in the first place.

There were more meetings. Some he was called in for, some he only heard about afterwards. He was never sure why he was asked to be there; they never asked him much of anything. All he did was sit there and let his mind wander until it was time to leave. The fifth meeting was populated not only by Hardington and Dillinger and Montag, but a handful of men in suits besides. They peered at Clu in a way that made his skin crawl, like they weren’t even looking at him, but rather at some idea he represented that they wanted to tear down.

“And you’re certain they won’t go all,” one of the men gestured, “I don’t know, The Matrix on us?”

Hardington laughed. “Well, he’s hardly agent Smith.” There was a smattering of laughter. The reference was lost on Clu. “Since perfecting the procedure, there have been less than five direct orders not followed, and those were under extreme circumstances. This is a very reliable product. Imagine even the labor costs that stand to be saved; a factory worker in the United States costs twenty, maybe thirty dollars an hour. Even inmate labor only drops the cost to thirteen cents per person per hour. With this, we’ll be able to compete with China and Bangladesh.”

Every time he came to these meetings, Clu’s head started to hurt. He started to get what Montag termed antisocial impulses, which boiled down to wanting to gut each of these men himself. Clu rubbed at the bridge of his nose and tried to tune it all out. Dillinger frowned at him.

“Is something wrong?”

Clu tamped down on his instinctive flare of irritation. “I’m fine. I’m just getting a headache.”

One of the men sat back and shook his head in wonderment. He turned to Hardington. “I don’t know. That might be a little too human for the public.”

“We could limit the language functions,” said another man, “yes sir, no sir, that kind of thing?”

Clu tuned the conversation back out. His headache was just getting worse, and Hardington’s voice was like nails on a chalkboard. There were- things flashing through his mind, barely comprehensible bits of thoughts and images that felt almost but not quite alien. He imagined his mind as a grid, and the sharp-edged chaos as corrupt code. In his mind he smoothed the jagged pieces down, calmed the storm until everything was orderly and smooth as glass. It quieted things, but only a little. Only enough to put a blunt edge on it. The little piece of him was still needling him, but from a little farther away. He let the conversation filter back in.

“-Supplied hardware, and the setup costs involved,” said Montag, “on that note, I never did get the chance to thank you personally for your company’s continued aid in our joint projects.”

“I can’t take all the credit. Dillinger here was the one to recover Flynn’s old notes and piece together exactly what it was you were looking for.” Hardington flashed his blinding white teeth. Dillinger pushed his glasses up on his nose and sighed. 

“Let me tell you, it wasn’t easy. Kevin Flynn was not a meticulous note-taker. The hardware was the only piece that was described in detail. We still don’t know how he managed to program any kind of AI, never mind an army’s worth of AI on a computer from the Stone Age.”

“However,” said Montag, “I’d like to thank you particularly for the loan of the matter transferal laser from your labs. I know it’s not the sort of technology that’s easy to let fall into others’ hands.”

“What can I say,” said Hardington, “I’m a patriot.”

The disobedient piece of Clu redoubled its efforts. It was saying think and feel and this is important and it wouldn’t stop. Clu willed it to shut up and that only made things worse. He shut his eyes. It wanted him to think? What did it want to think about? Montag? The meeting? Kevin Flynn? The laser la-

Something pieced itself together like a jigsaw puzzle, like the parts of a gun. There had been bits of information building up for a long time, but he’d never been able to fit them together into a whole. They’d had to work from Flynn’s original notes. That meant they didn’t have an original source. They didn’t know that programs were just programs, not dedicated AI. It was why they hadn’t known that humans could be digitized or how to rectify them or what the grid was or could be. And if they didn’t have the original source, and the laser they’d been using wasn’t Flynn’s, then…

The insistent buzz of that little piece of him became a roar. His ill-fated invasion, now dimly remembered, had spread from their launching point. The users had never found the hidden room, maybe never even known it was there. Flynn’s laser was still in the arcade, and so was his grid, and so was Flynn. The scraps of an idea started to form in his head but it was amorphous, hard to see and hard to grasp.

“I,” Clu stood, interrupting the conversation. His mind was reeling. Everyone was staring at him. “I’m sorry. My headache’s really quite bad. Do you mind if I step outside?”

“Don’t leave this floor,” Montag raised his eyebrows, and Clu fled. In the hallway he leaned against the wall and tried to get himself under control. He- he felt like there was something inside him breaking down, pieces that were once a smooth whole turning jagged and sharp. He felt flayed ragged and new, like a veil had been lifted. Was there something he should be doing? The little piece of him spurred him on but he didn’t know why or where he was supposed to be going. The arcade… He was still in the same city, wasn’t he? He had to be. Encom was here. Encom had been Flynn’s company.

The thought of Flynn brought up a whole new wave of conflicting ideas and imperatives. Rage and need and find him all tangled up in a knotted mess. Clu stumbled through the halls. The corridors were too close, too confining. He couldn’t breathe. When he reached the railings that overlooked the atrium he bowed his head. His hands turned white knuckled on the banisters. Everything had broken loose in him all at once. He was lost. He didn’t know what to do, how to make it stop. He opened his eyes, but it didn’t chase the chaos away. His headache still pounded at him. Flynn…

Flynn could reverse his programming. The patch that bound him to his orders. The reworking that made him want to follow them.

Clu looked down at the atrium, down at what he could see of the successive balconies that extended from each floor. People wandered back and forth, all in suits and ties and black. It was like a uniform. There was a man on the balcony three floors below that caught his eye. His suit was a paler grey, and it was enough to set him apart from the legions of office drones. He held a briefcase in one hand and a cell phone in the other. He turned a little to check it, and Clu narrowed his eyes. The man looked familiar, and after squinting at him Clu realized he looked like Rinzler. Rinzler thirty years later, but still.

…No. It couldn’t be.

Was this Rinzler’s- no, Tron’s primary user? He wracked his brain for the man’s name. A. It started with A, he was sure of it. This was the man he’d paged. He’d been Flynn’s friend, and he could use that, he could, he just wasn’t sure how. The man started to move away, and some fragment, some mad little piece of him made him lean a little over the railing and call out.

“Alan?”

Three floors below, Alan raised his head and frowned. He looked left, then right, and finally up. Clu watched the change wash over him. Alan went pale, and his briefcase fell from his hand to bounce off the carpeting with a thump. He mouthed Kevin once, and Clu stared down anxiously. He’d called out on impulse. He wasn’t sure what was supposed to come afterwards.

“S… Stay there,” said Alan, “don’t move. I’m coming up.” He scooped up his briefcase without looking and disappeared under the overhang. After a moment Clu heard the ding of the elevator, and then the muffled whirr of the motor in the shaft. His palms were sweating. Was this a good idea? He didn’t know anything about the user except what he’d been told about him thirty years ago. A thousand years ago. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to move closer to the elevators or if he wanted to run away until he could work out his confusion, but he stayed rooted to the spot.

The elevator doors opened and before Clu knew what was happening Alan’s arms were wrapped around him. Clu stiffened. He’d never liked people touching him except on his own terms. It was all the stranger because despite Alan’s graying hair, his glasses, even the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, he looked enough like Rinzler to set off the hardwired alarm bells in Clu’s head that went off when Rinzler started acting erratically. He had to remind himself that, no, this was someone else, and someone far less likely to kill him.

“Kevin,” said Alan, “you- god, you haven’t aged a day.” He seemed to sense Clu’s discomfort, and he backed off a little. “How did you- where have you been? Thirty years, Kevin, how do you disappear for thirty years without ever once thinking to come back? It’s been months since I got your message, and then Sam disappeared-“

Alan was getting more and more agitated as he went on, relief giving way to a torrent of long pent-up emotion, and Clu knew he had to cut it off before he got too loud, before he attracted attention. He thought of just going with it, pretending to be the user, but the ability to lie had long ago been weeded out of him. There was only one option open to him, and he hoped to whatever bits of the universe that might lend him luck that it worked. “…Alan. I’m not Kevin Flynn.”

“What?” Alan’s expression went blank, and then through a quick succession of embarrassment and loss and bitter disappointment. He backed up a step. “I… I’m sorry. I thought- you looked so much like-” He looked away. “It was a mistake. I’ll just- go.”

“No. No no no, listen to me,” Clu cast a furtive glance behind him. The halls were still clear. Good. “I’m not Flynn, but I know where he is. And Sam. There’s-“ he stopped. Did Alan know about the grid? What did he know about any of it? Flynn must have told him something, back in the day. Maybe not enough. He fought against the reflexive bit of anger the mere mention of Flynn was starting to spark again, after so long with that part of him mind silent. The part of him that felt so foreign, the calculating part, the part that was sharp and careful and proud, was starting to reestablish itself. He was almost surprised at how right it felt. Like waking up after a long sleep. “What do you know about what he was doing before he disappeared? What did he tell you?”

“He,” Alan narrowed his eyes, “I don’t know. Revolutionizing the world. Changing everything. I never knew half of what was going on in his head. What do you mean you know where he is? Who are you?”

“My name’s Clu. I-“

Alan barked a disbelieving laugh. “You mean Kevin’s character from Code Wars? You’re going to have to do better than that. It may have come out decades ago, but it’s not nearly obscure enough to get that past me.”

“From what? No, never mind, I don’t want to know. It’s my name whether you like it or not. Look, did he ever tell you about a… Another world?”

Alan frowned, “sometimes he’d say something about computers like he’d been crawling around inside one, but I’m pretty sure that was a metaphor. He didn’t see things like other people.”

Clu chanced another glance behind him. Still clear, but he didn’t know how long that would last. “It wasn’t a metaphor. I’m not sure how it started, I wasn’t around then, but his company was working on the digitization of objects-“

“The digitization laser. I remember that, but that was back in the eighties.”

“I know. Just- listen. Flynn took the laser, and he used it to get inside the system. That’s where he is right now, and where he’s been for the past thirty years.”

The look Alan was giving him- it wasn’t good. “You’re insane.”

“I’m not human,” Clu pressed on, “I’m a computer program. Flynn made me in nineteen eighty-five.” He said it with a wince. He knew how that sounded. “I was meant to be a copy. Why do you think I look like him? Him thirty years ago, at that?”

Alan started to turn away. “I don’t know who you are, but if this is a prank, it’s in poor taste.” Clu grabbed his sleeve in desperation.

“You got a page six months ago from the arcade. Sam went in your place, and you never saw him again.”

“How do you know that?”

“I sent it.”

“You…” Alan turned back to face him, and there was a hard edge to him that made Clu want to back away. He knew now where Rinzler had gotten his killer instinct. “What did you do to Sam?”

Clu wanted to say nothing, but when his mouth opened he found himself saying something else. “Manipulated him. Put him in the games. He did better than I expected.” He shook his head. “I mean- he’s fine. I think. Last time I saw him. He’s with Flynn.”

“Let’s say I believe you. If you’re a program, and Kevin’s,” Alan waved his hand, “inside a computer, what are you doing out here?” Clu winced. There was no way to put it and make himself look good. He could feel the words in his mouth like a physical thing trying to get out, and the more he tried to hold them back the harder it was. The best he could do was delay the moment. 

“What was in the news six months ago? The day Sam disappeared?”

“I don’t know. There was some kind of riot? I was a little preoccupied at the time.”

That stung. That was his invasion, botched as it was, right there. Just a riot. Barely a blip on anyone’s radar, and so many months later no one even remembered it. “That was me.”

“What do you mean that was you?”

“I mean I led it. It was ill-advised and ended horribly and now I’m the army’s lapdog and god, do you want Flynn back or not?”

“All right,” said Alan, “all right, I’ll go along with it, but if this is some sick joke-“

“It’s not. How far away is the arcade?”

“You mean Flynn’s arcade? Maybe fifteen, twenty minutes by car. Why?”

Clu worked the numbers in his head. Twenty minutes there, twenty minutes back. Maybe ten more for time spent in the grid, if it worked. If he was even right and everything was still there. He had to take the chance. The fact of the matter was this: Flynn could fix him. Going groveling to Flynn made something in him want to curl up and scream, and there was a good chance that this was a suicide run, but he had to gamble and hope he came out on top. He could already feel his adapted programming healing over the hole he’d punched through it, and soon enough he’d be back to being a cheerfully obedient drone if he didn’t do anything about it. He couldn’t take that. He couldn’t take any more of Montag’s smug face, of turning his people against themselves, of planning for other people’s wars. “Take me there.”

“What, now?”

“There’s no time to wait,” Clu hissed through his teeth, “I don’t exactly have much agency. I might not get another chance, and if they find out I’m gone, it’s going to get ugly. You don’t even want to know.”

Finally, Alan nodded. “I’ve got a car in the parkade.”

He called the elevator and Clu kept watch over his shoulder. An hour was a safe bet, wasn’t it? They wouldn’t come looking for him too soon. He hoped they wouldn’t. Prayed they wouldn’t. He didn’t like this plan. There were too many variables, too many things that could go suddenly and disastrously wrong, but he didn’t have a choice. He stepped into the elevator when it came, and as soon at it started moving he knew there was a problem. His headache, once receding, burst into white-hot pain. His knees buckled and Clu caught himself on the railing. He remembered Montag saying don’t leave this floor. His hands slipped, and Alan caught him.

“What’s wrong?”

Clu gasped. It was hard to form a thought. He bit his lip, hard, and the physical pain was just enough of a distraction for him to get the words out. “Tell me to come with you!”

“What?”

“Order me!”

“C… Come with me,” said Alan, “that’s an order.”

The pain ebbed. His hands were shaking. He could taste blood and probed his lip with the tip of his tongue. It stung, but it would heal. When he felt able, he got his feet back under him and stood. “…Thank you.”

Alan was looking decidedly uneasy. “What the hell was that?”

“I’m a program. I serve the users,” he said bitterly. Still, though, a little bit of triumph made his mouth quirk into a smirk. They never had specified which users. “I follow orders. Can’t go against them. Normally I wouldn’t even be able to want to, but today… I’m a little broken, today. It won’t last forever.”

The elevator doors slid open. The parkade was as he’d expected, all white-painted concrete, rows of cars and a pervasive smell that was half spilled fuel and half exhaust. Alan led him to a car. It was sleek and black, with tinted windows. When he slid inside it was dim and cool. He was grateful.

“Even if it’s true,” said Alan, “if you really are what you say you are, what were you doing at Encom?”

Clu took a minute before answering. There was a persistent little bubble of joy growing in his chest, at escaping Montag and going against orders for once, and he tried to wall it off where it wouldn’t interfere. He couldn’t afford to get distracted. “Your CEO knows what I am. They’ve got a deal going for mass producing people like me. Just think, a few years from now, no more factory robots or maids or human soldiers. Only an expendable, limitless supply of programs who are always happy to serve.” They pulled out onto the street and Clu flinched at the brightness of the sun. Alan eyed him.

“You don’t seem very happy.”

“I didn’t say it was perfect.”

The rest of the trip was silent. Clu found himself counting seconds, minutes, and cursing at stoplights inside his head. The road was clogged with cars. He wanted the grid’s wide, open roads, and the speed of a lightcycle. Clu found himself tapping at his knee impatiently. It was better than digging at Alan’s upholstery, at least. When they pulled up in front of Flynn’s arcade he couldn’t get out of the car fast enough. Alan unlocked the doors, and stepping inside was like walking into a tomb. He saw footprints in the dust, left by him and his people the first time. He saw the machines where they’d been pushed out of the way. The clear plastic dustcovers floated like ghosts in the breeze, and when Alan turned on the power, the sudden burst of noise made him jump.

“There’s nobody here,” said Alan, over the sound of a roomful of games starting up. Clu shook his head.

“Shut the door.” He turned and walked to the back, to the game cabinet against the back wall. When he’d first come through it, its name had seemed like an amusing reinforcement of his victory over Flynn. Now it was a cruel joke at his expense. Tron. He hooked his fingers around hidden handles and pulled. The cabinet slid out along its track. Alan hurried up beside him.

“There’s a hidden room back here?”

“More than that.” When the gap was wide enough, he squeezed through. Alan followed. The low-ceilinged hallway stretched out before them. The arcade’s sound went muffled, and somewhere behind them there was the thump of the cabinet swinging back into place. “There are a lot of things he didn’t tell you.”

Flynn’s study was just as Clu had left it. He ran his hand along the laser with trembling fingers, wiped the thin layer of dust from the surface of the monitor. There were things he could do from here. He could wipe out Flynn or Sam or the ISO with the touch of a key, destroy everything he’d ever known in one fell swoop. He could format the system and start again.

He didn’t.

“That’s Lora’s laser,” Alan was looking at it wonderingly, “I always wondered where that thing had gone. They had to build another prototype.”

Clu laid his hands flat on the monitor, didn’t turn around. “Are you coming with me?”

“I’m not letting you out of my sight, if that’s what you mean.”

“It’ll be dangerous.”

Alan looked, for a moment, the very image of Tron. “If I can find Kevin, I don’t care.”

Clu’s mouth curled into the ghost of a smile. Would anyone have done the same for him, if their positions were reversed? “Stand here with me, then. It’s already counting down.” Alan stepped into place. Clu didn’t turn to look at the laser, just stayed where he was and closed his eyes. Three, two, one-

He came apart, and it was like coming home.


	11. Chapter 11

The grid.

A digital frontier.

The thought fell apart. They’d come out in the replica of Flynn’s arcade, and Clu laid his hand on a pillar. He took a shaky breath. The pillar’s veins glowed a little brighter under the pressure. This was his grid. This was home. He was still attuned to it, or it to him. The shape of it sang to him, in his head and in his veins, but he knew better than to tap into it. He had to do this right and keep as low a profile as possible. Who knew what had changed since he’d been gone? Behind him, Alan turned in a slow circle and stared at the architecture, open-mouthed. “This is the arcade.”

“It’s a copy.” Clu touched his lapel and considered letting the code ripple out into a bodysuit. He thought the better of it. This wasn’t his system anymore- for all he knew, he’d been flagged as hostile. His suit kept his golden circuitry mostly hidden. It would make him stand out, but in a way that was less likely to be lethal. “Flynn built it.”

“Why?”

“Sentimentality. I don’t know.” 

Alan touched the wall, carefully, like he thought it might come apart. “It’s so real. If I didn’t know better…”

“That’s because it is real.” Clu’s disk was a heavy and welcome weight between his shoulderblades. He wanted to think about reprogramming himself and skipping this whole suicidal venture, but his mind slid away from the thought no matter how hard he tried to grasp it. He’d been disallowed from tampering with his own code, and it wasn’t until now, now, when his code had a ragged hole in it, that he really understood how deep that ran. His fingers wouldn’t even twitch toward the disk. “It’s just not the reality you’re used to. This isn’t a game.” Now that he’d seen both iterations of the arcade the differences between them stood out like a beacon. The user world’s version was old and crumbling, thick with dust and crowded full of machines. The grid’s arcade was open and clean, nothing but elegant arches and a tracery of circuits that was more elaborate than strictly necessary. It was more like a monument than something intended for use. He turned to open the doors, and the second he did he could feel Alan’s eyes boring into him.

“What is that?” Alan reached out and touched Clu’s disk before he could react. It beeped once, sharply. 

“What do you think you’re doing?” Clu jerked away. The contact made a sick feeling run through him, panic-fear-rage, there and gone again so fast it made his head spin. He cast out tendrils of thought but his programming didn’t seem to have changed. “Don’t touch that.”

He didn’t want Alan’s hands on him. Or, more accurately, he didn’t want Alan rearranging his code. For all that he was a user- and an adept one, at that, he’d built Tron after all- Clu didn’t trust him to put his code right. It wasn’t just that Alan wouldn’t know which parts of him were original. It was something that was deep, and profoundly uncomfortable. When it came down to it he didn’t trust anyone to make changes. (But he’d come to see Flynn for just that reason. Did that mean he trusted-?)

Clu mentally stomped the thought into dust. Something else nagged at him, a growing, almost physical discomfort. Alan had asked him a question and he hadn’t answered it yet. “It’s an identity disk. It’s me. I’m it. I don’t expect it to make sense to a user.”

“…If you say so.” Alan looked at the disk with interest, like maybe when he had the time he’d want to take it apart to see how it worked. Clu kept an eye on him to make sure he didn’t get ideas. “There is one other thing.” Alan pointed, and Clu looked down to see a faint golden glow seeping through his suit in straight lines. He winced. His suit wasn’t so opaque after all. “You’re sort of… Glowing. A little.”

“It’s nothing. Circuitry. It doesn’t matter.”

“I’m not glowing.”

“You’re human.” Clu peered out the front door. The coast seemed clear. Alan came up behind him and his presence prickled across Clu’s skin. He’d almost forgotten the constant wash of energy that rolled off a user’s body; it was like standing next to an open furnace.

“This place is bigger than I thought.” Alan squinted out into the street. Clu shrugged, and Alan shook his head. “I know, not important. Where are Kevin and Sam?”

“Here,” said Clu, “somewhere.” He walked out into the street. “Follow me.” 

The area was deserted. No surprise, really. This part of the grid had always been more an indulgence of Flynn’s than a truly functional sector. The thing was, walking down the road… It hurt. It felt good, but still. The whole place was so much a part of him, his grid, his people, that having it back after it was missing for so long was like jamming something into place inside him that there was no longer room for. The city on the horizon was unfamiliar. How much time had passed here, while he’d been taking the slow road? Twenty cycles? It was plenty of time for Flynn to retake and rebuild the system after Clu had made his, in retrospect, not-so-triumphant exit.

Deep inside, he could feel his code smoothing over line by line. It was getting harder and harder to remember why he was here or why it was important, harder and harder to think for himself, or do anything but stand there and wait for instruction. He fought against it as hard as he could. He grit his teeth, blocked out all the bits of himself warring for his attention. The programming falling back into place was like being forced underwater, and watching the ice above him freezing over the hole.

He didn’t notice the recognizer until it was too late.

Blinding light burst into being overhead. Clu threw his arm over his eyes. The machine thrummed into place above them. Instinct took over and he ran, but his fifth step took him to ground that was already destabilizing. He retreated. The pavement tessellated away. He was trapped. Somewhere behind him he heard the sharp intake of Alan’s breath. The recognizer loomed above, larger than life and lit in icy blue. It settled into place with a thunk and a deep roar of engines that he could feel vibrating through the core of him.

He stared up at the thing. It was still for a few seconds, and then it shuddered to life. The carriage descended. Clu stayed as far back as possible. Alan stood right out there in the open, wonder on his face, and Clu could only guess at how he’d survived so long with instincts like that.

The gates opened and Sam Flynn walked out. 

He looked just as Clu remembered him. Like his father, in some ways, but so, so very different in others. Clu remembered holding Sam’s disk in his hands. It felt like cycles ago, now. Years. Decades. If he could have, he would’ve tried to make a run for it. The worst-case scenario was encountering the ISO girl first. She’d derezz him, no questions asked, and he was in no condition to mount a competent defense. The second-worst case was Sam. Clu didn’t know what he’d do.

Alan surged forward. “Sam!”

“Alan?” Sam looked stunned as Alan embraced him wholeheartedly. His astonishment turned into a smile and then he was laughing. He clapped Alan on the back. “How did you get into the grid? No- never mind, it doesn’t matter. You’re here!” When Alan let go, Sam’s grin was so wide Clu thought it might split his face. “I can’t believe you got in. I mean, Dad and I hoped, but with the way things went down, we thought we might be stuck here forever.”

“It’s good to see you, kiddo.” Alan touched Sam’s shoulder, like he thought the other man might evaporate if he didn’t make certain he was real. “I can’t believe… I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”

“You know me. Always popping up where you least expect it.” Sam waved a hand at the towers in the distance. “Have you seen the- well, it’s not really the time for tours, I guess.”

“Sam,” said Alan, and Clu could hear the way he kept the hope in his voice tamped almost flat. “Is your father here, too?”

“Yeah. Yeah! Come on, you’ve gotta go see him. Man, he’ll be over the moon.”

Someone else walked out of the recognizer behind Sam. He was nearly Sam’s double, and Clu realized it had to be a program. Now there was a strange thought- after Clu’s exodus, the grid had been nearly emptied. If Sam and Flynn repopulated it, it would be full of near-copies of themselves. Alan gave it a funny look and Sam laughed. “I know, right? They’re programs. They get their user’s faces, more or less.”

Alan blinked like he was just now remembering Clu. “About that.”

“What?”

Alan pointed off to the side, in Clu’s direction. Clu tried to press himself further into the recognizer’s shadow. There was nowhere to run. This was exactly what he hadn’t wanted happening. He had to find Flynn on his own terms or everything fell apart, but it was already too late for that. For a long moment Sam didn’t seem to understand. 

Then he did.

“You.” Sam strode over, fury written in the set of his jaw and the tension of his hands. “What the fuck are you doing here? The real world’s not enough for you? What did you do to Alan?”

Clu held up his hands. “I didn’t do anything.”

“The hell you didn’t-“

“I’m here to talk to Flynn.”

“Over my dead body you are. You think you can just…” Sam trailed off. He seemed to sense the oddness of the whole situation, and belatedly Clu remembered the way the city had fed him information through his skin when he’d ruled it. It had to be the same for Sam, only a thousandfold stronger for a user. Clu watched the slow smile spread across Sam’s face and his heart sank. “There’s something wrong with you.”

“It’s not-“

“And you need Kevin Flynn,” Sam kept talking like Clu hadn’t interrupted, “so you walk in here like you still own the place, and drag Alan along so you won’t get derezzed the second you start poking around. Where’s your army, Clu?”

The truth battered at his lips until he was forced to give it. “I don’t have one.” 

“You used to. What happened?”

“We were- unprepared,” Clu grit out. He didn’t want to say any more, not to Sam, but he couldn’t make himself stop. “We lost. Now they belong to someone else.”

Sam circled him. “And you?”

“And me.”

“Who owns you?”

“The government,” said Clu, “Encom. I can’t- let me see Flynn. I don’t care what you do. Leave the grid. Stay. I just need to talk to him.”

Sam stopped. Smiled at him. It wasn’t a kind smile. He recognized it as the double of his own, the first time he’d met Sam. “I don’t know. I don’t think you deserve that.”

Alan stepped forward. “Sorry, what’s going on?”

“Just a little history, Alan,” said Sam, “whatever he said to get you in here, it was probably mostly lies. It’s just what he does.” Alan looked bewildered.

“He said you and your father were here, and I could get you out.”

“What, really?”

“That’s the gist of it.”

Sam shrugged. “Whatever. He’s always got an angle.”

Clu ground his teeth and abandoned the tattered scraps of his dignity. “Please.”

Sam turned to stare at him. The way the corner of his mouth quirked up said disbelief and amusement and contempt louder than words ever could. Clu wondered if he should have said it at all, but it was too late to second-guess now. “What did you just say?”

“Please. I need to see him. I don’t care if I have to beg. This isn’t just about me, there are bigger stakes in play.” There was no point in hanging onto his dignity, but it still stung.

“…Well.” There was some change that went through Sam then, and all Clu knew was that he didn’t like it. This was a more dangerous situation than he’d ever been in with Montag- Montag had never wanted him dead, just cowed. “Go on, then.”

Clu paused. “What?”

“Beg.” 

Clu’s mouth opened of its own volition. It was an order, and orders were easy. He didn’t have to care what he was doing so long as he got what he wanted, and a little more time following orders was nothing on top of the months that had already gone by. “Please. I need to see Flynn, you don’t know how important this is, I’ve got a time limit-”

“Mm,” said Sam, “I give it a D minus. Do better.”

“What do you want from me?”

Sam looked at him appraisingly. “You could try apologizing.”

Clu opened his mouth. Closed it again. There was an edge to the order, and he already knew that whatever he said, it would be wrong. “…I’m sorry?”

“For what?” Sam looked colder than Clu had ever seen him. “Betraying my father? Running this place like your own personal dictatorship? The executions? The genocide? It’s a long list.”

Alan came up beside Sam. “He really…?”

“And more.”

“…He got out.” Alan looked at Clu pensively, and Clu squirmed under his gaze. He could see the gears turning in Alan’s head, and squashed the repeating litany of no no no no no in his head down to a more manageable size. Alan wasn’t stupid. He’d have figured it out sooner or later- Clu had just been hoping for later. “He… He got out the day you disappeared. Did he leave you here?”

“More like trapped,” said Sam, “dad too, back in the day.”

Alan turned to Clu. His voice was barely more than a whisper. “You trapped Kevin here for thirty years?” 

“…I,” said Clu, and he could feel the yes locked behind his teeth, inexorable. Alan didn’t wait for him to answer. He just knew, Clu could see it in his face. There was horror there, and betrayal, and for a moment Clu could see Tron in him, or Rinzler. He wasn’t sure which, and he couldn’t look him in the face any longer. 

When Alan spoke again it was a little louder, a little colder, a little more venomous. “He has to follow orders.”

“…Really,” said Sam, his voice perfectly neutral.

“So he says.”

“Huh.” Sam walked in a slow circle around Clu, and if Clu could have, he’d have been sweating. He tried to keep an eye on Sam without being obvious about it. The back of his neck prickled. He wanted to run. “Take off your disk.” 

Clu’s hands twitched toward it. He couldn’t stop. The disk was solid and warm in his hands, and he unhooked it with a twist. “What are you doing?”

Sam stopped circling. 

“Light it up,” said Sam, and Clu’s wrist twitched involuntarily. The disk blazed to life. Space warped around its circumference, the cutting edge bright and sharp. Clu could hear the high, thin whine of electricity, and smell the tang of ozone. He chanced a glance at Alan, but judging from the look on his face he’d be getting no help from that quarter.

“I apologized,” Clu blurted out, disk humming in his hand, “what do you want-?”

“Here’s an order for you. Follow the leader.” Sam lifted his right hand. Clu found himself mimicking the motion, and when Sam curled his hand in closer and closer to his own chest Clu did the same, only his hand wasn’t empty. He tried to resist and couldn’t. 

“Don’t do this,” the cutting edge was inches from his own skin. “Don’t-“

“Go on.” Sam moved his hand closer. The disk sheared through the first layer of Clu’s suit with a buzz and a snap, and little cubes of data crumbled to the ground. His whole body trembled with the effort it took not to derezz himself.

“Please!”

“You’re trouble, Clu,” said Sam, “we both know that.”

He couldn’t hold on. The disk slipped, just a few millimeters, and gouged a crack in his chest. Damaged data cascaded down his front. It hurt. He mewled, and it came out twisted and half-digital. He could see the black, sparking latticework of damage it left in its wake. Clu looked at Alan desperately. “He’s going to kill me,” he said, “make him stop, make him stop-”

Alan looked alarmed. “Sam-?”

Sam dropped his hand. Suddenly the pressure was gone, and the disk tumbled from Clu’s fingers. The cutting edge winked out and it clattered to the ground. His chest was an open wound and he curled around it. The edges were still crumbling, and he tried to hold all the pieces in. It was agony but it wasn’t going to kill him, so at least there was that- if he’d been organic at the time, he’d be too busy bleeding to death to think.

Sam looked at him wonderingly. “I can’t believe you just did that.”  
“What do you mean you can’t believe-” Clu clutched tighter at the wound and hissed through his teeth. “Alan told you I had to follow orders.”

“I thought it was one of your long games.”

“It’s not.”

Alan was staring at the black hole in Clu’s chest. “What did you do?”

“Cut him open a bit,” said Sam, “now I’m wondering if it would be easier to just, you know,” he drew a sharp line across his throat with his hand.

“You want to kill him?” Alan sounded surprised, dismayed, and that let Clu breathe a little easier. “Sam, why? Even if he has done awful things, you can’t just…”

Sam shook his head. “My dad’s a nice guy, you know? Too nice, sometimes, and Clu’s like a plague of trouble wherever he goes. He’s a horrible person, Alan, and I mean that in the kicking puppies, burning down orphanages and taking over third-world countries kind of way.”

“Your father wouldn’t want that. Even if he-” Alan looked at Clu and Clu could see him thinking, again, about thirty years. He spoke through gritted teeth. “I don’t know what happened in here, don’t get me wrong. Maybe he is awful, but he led me here to you and your father. I’d never have found you, otherwise.” Alan picked up Clu’s disk and turned it over in his hands. “Isn’t that worth one conversation?”

Sam made an impatient noise. “It shouldn’t be.”

“Please, Sam. For me?” Alan held out Clu’s disk, and Sam frowned at it and snatched it out of Alan’s hands.

“Fine. For you. One conversation.” He kicked Clu in the leg. “Come on.”

Clu took a wavering step. The cut pulled, deeper than he’d thought, and the few glassy data cubes he’d managed to catch spilled out of his arms and over the ground. He staggered into the recognizer along with Sam and Alan and was confronted with a crew of Sam duplicates. He forced down a laugh that would only be painful. They were all looking at him. Alan eyed the gash in Clu’s chest. “Can that be fixed?”

“Yeah,” said Sam.

“Are you going to?”

“Are you kidding? No.”

The recognizer took off. Clu watched his grid passing beneath his feet, but it wasn’t his grid anymore. The buildings had been rearranged. Some were missing altogether, or replaced by new shapes. He didn’t recognize the skyline any longer, or the direction they were taking. Alan kept an eye on him the whole trip. Whether that was to watch and see if he’d fall apart or keep him from trying anything he wasn’t sure. Sam seemed to forget about him readily enough in favor of pointing out the architecture to Alan. Clu shut his eyes and tried to will some of his broken pieces back into place. It didn’t work.

A jolt went through him when they landed. He lost his footing and caught himself on the recognizer wall. Sam looked at him sourly. “Out.”

“Is Flynn here?”

“I said out.” 

The building they’d stopped in front of was a work of art. Clu shuffled out behind Sam and Alan and looked up. It had no straight lines. Instead it was all curves and spindly support struts, honeycombed glass and delicate filigree. It was lit from within. The influence was obvious. It was an ISO building, and Clu shoved down his instinctive aversion, his desire to knock it all down and pretend it had never been there at all. 

The inside was just as oddly built. Sam caught one of the programs walking by and told him to go find the ISO girl and bring her here. The program looked overjoyed to be of service, and Clu felt a twinge of something pleased inside his head, something telling him that obedience was good. He wanted to find where it lived and pull it out at the root.

An elevator shaft rose up and out of sight at the back of the building. It was lined in steady blue light, and Sam pushed Clu into place. The platform rose. Clu watched the layers of floors whip by, light-dark-light, and when the lift came to a stop they stepped out into a wide, open room. Every outside wall was glass, and every inside wall a curved redirect like a maze. There were no clean lines, no right angles. The shape of it made Clu’s skin itch. Too many blind spots. Too many places to hide. Sam stepped forward. “Dad?”

“I’m over here, Sam.” 

The sound of Flynn’s voice sent an unpleasant shiver through Clu. All his resolve deserted him. This had been a bad idea. He should never have come here. Why had he ever thought this would work? It was stupid, and he was stupid, and all there was to do was wait for the moment of the spectacular backfire. He was sure it would be coming along any minute now.

“Hey dad,” said Sam, “guess what? I’ve got a surprise for you.” 

Flynn came around a low wall. He was dressed all in white, and he looked just as Clu remembered. Clu stepped back behind a pillar, out of sight. He didn’t know if he could do this. He didn’t know if he could bear this. “And it’s not even my birthday. What is it?”

“More like who.”

Alan stepped forward. “Flynn lives,” he smiled, like he could barely believe he was there at all. “Been a while, Kevin.”

“…Alan?” Flynn froze. When the shock passed he came forward, one slow step at a time. “Is that really you?”

“In the flesh,” said Alan, “or- you know.” 

“You got old, man.”

“So did you.” He wrapped his arms around Flynn. Clu couldn’t see Alan’s face, but Flynn’s was full of a pure and unadulterated joy that sent something that was most certainly not jealousy running through him. The beads on Flynn’s wrist jangled down his arm. Flynn tapped Alan’s glasses. “Finally lost the nerd glasses?”

“Years ago,” said Alan, “wait, I thought you liked them?”

“You look better like this.” Flynn let go of him and turned to Sam. “You didn’t tell me the I/O tower activated.”

“Yeah, well.” Sam shrugged. “I thought I’d check it out first, just to see who came through. Good thing I did, too.”

Flynn’s smile faltered. “What do you mean?”

“I mean-“ Sam looked around. Clu was still tucked behind his pillar, and he pressed himself farther back. “Oh for fuck’s sake, where’d he go?”

“Language, Sam.”

“Sorry, dad.” Sam hurried back, spied Clu and grabbed his arm. “What do you think you’re doing?” He dragged Clu out, and once Flynn could see him, Clu couldn’t do anything but flinch and stare at the floor. There was a time when he’d have been able to face his user with his head held high, but everything had been stripped from him. Everything.

“What…” Flynn stepped forward. “Clu?” Sam shoved him farther into the open.

“Yeah. This asshole came through, too. Says he wants to talk to you. I think we should toss him off the tower, myself.”

Flynn looked too distracted to comment on his son’s swearing. “What are you doing here?”

“Long story,” Clu rasped, and clutched as his chest as a bit more of him crumbled away.

“You wanted to talk,” said Sam, “so talk.”

Clu opened his mouth, and all of a sudden he didn’t know where to begin. There was too much. So much had happened. He couldn’t even start at the point where he’d left the grid, because there was more than that, and more, and more, and so much he was nearly drowning in it. “Give Flynn my disk.”

Sam narrowed his eyes at Clu. “What are you planning?”

“Nothing. Just- please. Give it to him.”

Alan handed Flynn the disk, and Clu went back to staring at the floor. He watched the reflected flicker of light as Flynn scrolled through everything he was, everything that had happened to him. It stopped and he still didn’t look up. Funny how the whole of him could be condensed down to a data burst. It made him feel small. Everything was silent for a long moment.

“You want me to fix you,” said Flynn. Clu nodded. He didn’t trust himself to speak.

“Don’t give him anything,” said Sam, “he doesn’t deserve it.”

Flynn turned the disk over in his hands. “Could I talk to Clu alone, for a minute?”

“Dad-“

“He won’t do anything.”

Sam still hesitated. “He’s evil.”

“He’s me,” Flynn said heavily, and Sam fell silent. After a minute Clu heard low voices, footsteps, and the hum and whirr of the elevator descending.


	12. Chapter 12

Flynn’s footsteps echoed on the hard floor. His hand appeared on Clu’s chest, just above the black gash, and Clu wanted to jerk away but Flynn’s touch was ten times as electric as Alan’s, a hundred times brighter. It was like wrapping his hand around a live wire or wading into a river during a storm; it didn’t hurt, except in all the ways that it did. It made him want to run. It made him want to press closer. It made him want a whole slew of things that were little more than half-forgotten, half-formed ideas. It was one of the perils of getting too close to your own user, and one of the reasons he’d stayed far away from Flynn after the coup. It was too easy to betray himself.

Flynn dragged his hand along the length of the wound. It sealed itself in his wake. Clu shivered at the sensation of skin knitting back together. 

“Did Sam do that?”

Clu shut his eyes. “He made me do it to myself.”

Flynn’s hand hesitated at the end of the wound for a moment, and then it went away. There were the sounds of footsteps receding. When Clu opened his eyes again Flynn was across the room, sitting on a low rise with Clu’s disk in his lap. Golden code swam above it in a loose net. He hardly recognized it anymore; so much of it was foreign, or twisted out of true. Clu made a slow approach. It was easier when Flynn wasn’t looking directly at him. He’d expected that after his absence Flynn would seem smaller, somehow, or at least less important. It didn’t happen like that. Flynn was just as much the lynchpin of his universe as he’d ever been.

“…You’ll repair the code, then?”

“That’s what I’m doing.” Threads of gold wound themselves around Flynn’s fingers. Some he snapped off and discarded. Others he wove back into place, securing connections and restoring order. Clu watched. He couldn’t stop the curl of uneasiness that ran up his spine when he saw his code being altered. Flynn could do anything to him, anything at all, but it was too late to worry about that now. He perched on a low wall and waited. The only sounds were the low noises Flynn always made when he was working, little hmms and ahas. A thought occurred to Clu and he broke the silence.

“And?”

Flynn looked up. He raised an eyebrow. “And what?”

“And you don’t like me. You’ve got no reason to do me any favors.” That sparked off a whole list of awful potential outcomes in his mind, and it terrified him how easy it was to come up with possibility after possibility. Flynn leaving him to Sam’s mercy, or reprogramming Clu more subtly, or abandoning the grid entirely, emptying it of its inhabitants, and leaving him there alone, forever. “What’s my half of the deal?”

“Tell you what. I’ll finish this up, and we’ll have a little talk. That’s all.”

Clu looked for the lie in his words and found nothing. “That’s all?”

“That’s right.” Flynn compressed Clu’s data back into the disk, and held out his hand. “Come here.” Clu was still obedient, even here, even to him. He was at Flynn’s side in moments, and Flynn held up the softly-glowing disk. “Turn around.”

Against his misgivings, Clu did. Flynn snapped the disk into place and the update coursed through him. The compulsions- the obedience, the cotton clouding his thoughts, the careful, cheerful politeness- tore free and it was like taking off a blindfold. The voice in the back of his head was finally silent, because he recognized it as his own. He felt lightheaded and nearly collapsed under the weight of the sheer sharpness and newness of the world. He could feel the pulse and crackle of electricity in his veins, and was half blinded by the dim running lights in the walls.

The only thing was, when the overload faded back to baseline, he didn’t feel any different. He didn’t feel like the fragments of old memory told him he should feel. It was like bits of him had been cut out and replaced with someone new. He wasn’t right. He wasn’t whole. “You did it wrong.” There was an edge of panic in his voice. “Put me back how I used to be!”

“I did, Clu.”

“No you didn’t!” Clu fumbled the disk off his back and sifted through the code in desperation. There wasn’t a single bit of Montag’s or Hellard’s code remaining. The patch, with its fishhook attachments, had been lifted free. The subtler reprogramming was gone. All that was left were original parts, no matter how hard he looked. “…I don’t understand.”

Flynn leaned back, his hands on his thighs, the very picture of calm knowing. Clu hated that expression, always had. “You changed, man. It happens.”

Clu reattached his disk. “Programs don’t change.”

“You were human enough to survive out there.”

“I’m not a user.”

“No,” said Flynn, “but you’ve learned to be something else.” He stood, and walked to the window. He kept his back to Clu. Was it a test, to see what he’d do? Clu didn’t know anymore. Flynn’s disk had been replaced- he must have had another made. Not so difficult, when he wasn’t fighting to keep his data out of enemy hands. It was the one black patch on Flynn’s white clothes, the one contrast that kept him from looking completely otherworldly. There was something about Flynn that still struck awe into him, even after everything. “You’ve had quite the time of it.” 

Clu grimaced. Maybe it would have been better to tell Flynn what had happened, rather than show him- now all his humiliations were in Flynn’s head, too. 

“Are you still chasing the perfect system?” Flynn asked, and Clu opened his mouth to say yes or of course, but nothing came. It had been his purpose. Was it still? Did he have a purpose? Was it something he was even capable of? 

“…It’s what you made me for,” he said slowly.

Flynn shook his head. “The thing about perfection is that it’s unknowable. Unobtainable. Even if you could find it it’s not something you’d want, in the end.” He raised his hand to touch the glass. It melted away under his fingertips. Outside was a balcony, and the city lay spread out below it in a bank of glittering lights. “Perfection leads to stagnation, and stagnation leads to decay. Not on the surface, just underneath, until it’s too late. Then it all goes out from under you. I think you found that out.”

Clu followed him out onto the balcony, turning the information over in his mind. “So I was pointless?”

“No. Just misguided. I set you an impossible task.” Flynn’s head tilted to the side. “Not that I knew it, at the time. I blame myself.”

“…Yourself?”

“You’re me, thirty years ago. I have to take responsibility for that.”

“You…” The thought that formed itself in Clu’s head was so strange, so alien he almost couldn’t understand it. “You don’t hate me?”

Flynn shook his head. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Do you want me to?” Flynn turned around and rested his elbows on the narrow railing. “You don’t hate me, either. Never did. I know that.”

“How do you-“

“During your coup, you could have derezzed me, or found a way to exile me outside the system. I haven’t got any doubt you could have worked out how. But you didn’t.” Flynn tilted his head to the side. “You kept me here, so I couldn’t leave you alone again. You did the same to Tron, just more directly.”

“I-”

Flynn shook his head. “Did you even understand why at the time?”

“I made the perfect system,” said Clu, “I did, and I made it for you, and you turned your back on it.”

“It wasn’t perfect, Clu. Nothing is. That’s the point.”

Clu felt like something in him had been laid open, and he scrambled to cover it. “What do you know?” he bared his teeth, “You treated this place like a game, coming and going when it pleased you. You could leave whenever you wanted, let someone else deal with your problems and build your system, and go back to the real world.” His voice dropped to a hiss. “You called it that. The real world, like this wasn’t. Do you know what it’s like to have someone who might as well be a god standing alongside you, and find out that to him, your whole world is something he does when he gets bored with his real life?”

“It doesn’t make what you did right.”

“They were my people. I gave them purpose. I made them happy. I freed them from the tyranny of the user.”

“And Tron?”

Clu looked out over the city. “I made him perfect.”

“Did he think so?”

His hands tightened on the railing. He didn’t want to look at Flynn. What was this sudden shame? “I made him better.”

“Did Montag make you better?”

Clu whirled on him. “No!”

“He gave you purpose. He made you happy. He freed you from the tyranny of your own mind.” Clu opened his mouth to deny it and Flynn sighed. “I saw your memories, Clu. You can’t lie to me. What was it, five months? You were happier that whole time than I’ve seen you in hundreds of cycles, except when bits of you broke down. All because you were told to be.”

Clu looked away. The sick feeling in him intensified. “That’s not the same thing.”

“Isn’t it?”

“It’s…” The word came out strangled. Whatever he was going to say next turned into a pained whine. He’d done… He’d done so many things, but they’d all been necessary, hadn’t they? For the sake of the system, not himself. He wasn’t Montag. He wasn’t petty or cruel or arbitrary. He wasn’t a tyrant or a dictator, building his empire on the backs of unwilling slaves.

Except maybe he was.

“But I freed them,” said Clu, and it was a small and halfhearted protest. Flynn edged a little closer, carefully, as if not to spook him. “Rinzler was… Tron wouldn’t stop talking about you when you were gone. Kevin this and Kevin that. He’d get sloppy when you were off doing-“ he waved a hand, “-whatever. Being a user.” Clu looked away. “Rinzler didn’t miss you. Rinzler didn’t need you.”

“Not everyone wants what you want, Clu.” Flynn looked at him and there were layers of meaning there, and implications Clu didn’t want to see. “You didn’t free them, you made yourself their master. Maybe I should have seen that coming. I’m not a god, but when people tell you that you are, it’s hard not to take that to heart. I ran this place in my own image, and maybe… Maybe that was a mistake.” Flynn looked troubled. “But you can’t change people. Not in the ways that matter, not without destroying who they are. You can only change yourself. That takes time, and effort, and it isn’t easy.”

Clu looked at the ground, so far below, and the sky that still roiled with clouds. Flynn’s hand found its way to Clu’s shoulder and it was an anchor on him. Something in his chest felt huge and heavy and sharp. “You said I’ve changed.”

“For the better.”

Clu didn’t know what to do with that. He turned and went back inside, tore himself from Flynn’s grip and didn’t look back, so Flynn wouldn’t see his face. If he’d… If this was how it had been all this time, if he’d been a despot and a tyrant, if his people served him out of nothing more than fear and coercion… What did he have? What was he supposed to do? Remove the programming? He couldn’t, they were all in Montag’s hands. A sound that was almost laughter caught in his throat. What could he do about Rinzler?

Flynn hurried in behind him. “What?”

“What am I supposed to do?” The laughter mutated into something half despairing. Clu wondered if Tron felt the same way Clu had under the rectification, always pounding at the walls and screaming to be let out from under the ice. All the time, for a thousand cycles. Clu knew the disobedient part of him would long ago have been ground to dust under that. How much of Tron really remained, underneath Rinzler? Enough for a whole, or just enough to flare up in bursts of violence, there and gone again? “Everything’s out of my hands. Rinzler would- Tron would kill me in a second, if he was back in control.”

“Ah.” Flynn’s expression flickered into disapproval and distaste. “I saw that. You and he…”

Clu cringed. There was a fresh new humiliation to toss on the pile- Clu’s memories of events after leaving the grid, of course, had included him and Rinzler, and now Flynn had seen that, too. “I didn’t force him, if that’s what you’re thinking.” He looked away. “It was never in the code. He did that on his own.”

“Can you really call it consent?”

“It was Rinzler’s idea.”

Flynn gave him the half-lidded look that said you’re a little slow, aren’t you. “You reprogrammed Tron to obey you, and serve you, and you don’t find it the littlest bit warped? Maybe Rinzler consents, but Tron?”

“The first time mostly happened as a result of me trying to distract Tron from breaking my neck, so there’s that.” He cleared his throat. “Rinzler was just more interested in fucking me than killing me.”

Flynn’s eyebrows were up about as high as they could go. He didn’t look like he quite knew what to say to that. Clu didn’t blame him. When had his life become the running punchline of a bad joke? “They’re the same person, Clu.”

“Are they?” He looked away, back toward the glittering city lights. “Until a few microcycles ago I was two people. One on the surface, one underneath. You put me back together and I’m still not the same as I was when I began.” Clu crossed his arms, held them close to his chest. “I don’t know how much of Tron is left. There wasn’t much of me left, and that was short term, considering. If you unified the whole of him I’m honestly not sure what you’d get. If you rectified him…” He shook his head. “It- it wouldn’t end well. His code is damaged enough as it is.”

Flynn was quiet for a long moment, and Clu didn’t look at him. Finally he spoke. “Do you know what rectify meant, originally?”

“To… Improve something?”

“To set something right.”

The elevator whirred to life behind them. Clu smoothed out his suit and schooled his face into a bland, civil veneer. It was the look Montag liked to see on him. It projected harmlessness, and when the lift settled into place, he made sure to keep his back to the wall.

There were three of them on the elevator. Sam, Alan, and the black-haired ISO girl. Her name… What was her name? Quorra? Quorra looked on edge, and when she caught sight of him watching her, she gave him a glare that was pure poison. Sam curled his lip. “He didn’t try anything, did he?”

“No,” said Flynn, “Clu’s behaved.”

“Wonder of wonders.”

Flynn ignored the remark. “We’ve still got time, but I’d like to leave as soon as possible, just in case.” He smiled. “Not every day you get a second chance.”

“Does he have to come?” asked Quorra. 

“He’d only break the system if we left him,” said Sam, “I’d rather keep him where I can see him.”

Clu thought of his own time limit. If he returned after Montag started looking, the man would know something was up. All of this would have been for nothing. He stuck close to Flynn on the way back down to the ground floor, and studiously avoided looking directly at anyone. Flynn wouldn’t let Quorra kill him, he was mostly sure.

The recognizer and its crew had long since departed. Instead, Flynn just took a left and kept walking. He looked at his city fondly, and Clu rushed to keep up. Alan pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. Clu watched him tip his head back as a small formation of lightjets flew over, leaving glossy silver trails in their wake. He wondered how real this felt to him. Did Alan see it as a concrete elsewhere, or was it a fever dream? Sam, meanwhile, looked distracted. He marched down the street in a straight line as programs weaved out of his way. He barely seemed to notice they were there. Quorra kept tugging him out of the way of obstacles. Clu suddenly realized that Alan had stepped ahead to talk to Flynn, and he was alone with Sam and the ISO. Should he hurry ahead as well, or pretend he hadn’t noticed? The choice was taken out of his hands when Sam looked up.

“Hey. Clu.”

Oh joy. Another round. “…What?”

“What’d you say about Encom, before?”

“Encom?”

“They’ve got you heeling and rolling over,” said Sam, “so what’s the story?”

Clu didn’t especially appreciate being compared to a dog- filthy, drooling creatures- but the image hit a little too close to home. “If you give a company the ability to make expendable people who’ll do whatever you tell them with a smile, what do you think will happen?”

The corner of Quorra’s lip twitched up. “You were rectified?”

Clu was long past getting worked up about the poetic irony. “Essentially.”

“Wait, wait,” said Sam, “they rectified programs, and kept them physical? Why?”

Clu looked at him flatly. “Yes, what use could perfectly obedient, programmable people possibly be put to?” Sam’s mouth shut with a snap, and Clu could tell Sam was considering exactly what kinds of possibilities those might be. “They’ve been discussing commercial production in the meetings. I’d give it a few months, tops, before they roll out the assembly lines. So to speak.”

“Who would…?”

“Kurt Hardington.”

Sam grit his teeth. “So it goes right to the top. Hardington- god, he’s the worst thing that ever happened to Encom.” He raised his voice. “Alan! Have you heard this?”

“Hm? What?” Alan blinked, broken from the distraction that was the city and Kevin himself.

“Rectifying programs! Slave labor! Who knows what else Hardington’s got in the pipeline.”

“I… Clu said something about it earlier. I was a little busy at the time.”

Clu jammed his hands into his pockets. “It’s worse than that, they’re just the commercial side. The army got us first. A man by the name of Montag, to be specific. They’ve already got a mill somewhere churning out copies. Long-term testing.”

“Hell,” said Sam, and raised his voice. Flynn had gotten ahead of them, almost out of earshot. “Hey dad?”

Flynn looked back. “Yeah?”

“Were you gonna take the company back?”

Flynn furrowed his brow. “I don’t know. Maybe after a wait, until I get used to the world again. It’s been a while.” He slowed to let the others catch up with him.

“…Yeah. You might want to do that a little sooner.” Sam filled him in, and Flynn looked horrified.

“What happened to my company?”

“It got, uh, corporate,” said Sam. Alan shook his head. 

“I should have been watching. I knew they were working on something secret, but I thought it was just, you know. Business as usual. Software. I never would have expected this in a million years.”

“It’s not your fault, Alan,” said Sam, “Hardington’s awful. There’s nothing you could have done about it. How is he still CEO?”

“He keeps Encom in the black.”

“Yeah, and that’s supposed to be enough to make up for the rest of him?”

Clu frowned at Flynn. “Wait, you didn’t know? You went through my memories.”

“…I might have skimmed a little.”

Clu wasn’t sure whether he was supposed to feel better or worse about that, but he could see the solar sailer’s platform rising around the next corner, and now really wasn’t the time to stop and think about it. He realized, belatedly, that he’d never had a plan for what to do after this. He’d never really thought he’d get this far. 

Flynn ushered the lot of them onto the sailer. It had been redesigned since Clu had last seen it- more a sleek passenger train than a cargo hauler. Almost as soon as they were onboard they were moving. Clu felt the first flicker of fear deep in his belly. Could he go back to Montag? How long could he keep up the charade? More to the point, what came after that? He tapped his fingers against the inside wall of the car.

“What am I supposed to do after this?” said Clu, “it’s not just me, and if they figure out that I can think again…”

There was silence, and then Alan raised his head. “A wise man once told me that the safest place to be was in the spotlight.”

“What does that even mean?”

“If everyone knows who you are, you can’t just disappear and have it go unremarked. Secrets are only dangerous when they’re secret.” 

“What,” Sam frowned, “we show up, and during the Flynn family back from the dead media circus we tell the cameras what Hardington’s doing?”

“No, whatever he may be, he’s never been stupid,” said Alan, “there won’t be any evidence. Without that it’s a fairy tale. We could prove the grid exists, but his plans? No.”

Clu looked away, out the window. It was hard to see anything but his own reflection. He worried at the inside of his lip. “Dillinger might feed you proof, if you talk to him.”

“Dillinger?” Said Flynn.

“Junior?” Said Sam.

Clu ignored the both of them. “He’s in over his head, I think. He did the work they asked him to, and now that he knows what he was working on,” he shrugged, “he’d run if he could but he knows too much to bow out. They just include him in the meetings because he cracked the codes.”

“What codes?”

“Us. Me. The other programs. A thousand cycles of internal modification barely makes sense in plaintext.”

Alan looked thoughtful. “I’ve got a bit of a network going on the outside. I can see what they can dig up, too. If we can just get Kevin up in front of the cameras we’ll have media coverage for at least a week. More than long enough to get the information out. Would it be possible to get video footage of the grid, do you think?”

“Any real hardcopy proof could be compiled into a torrent and disseminated,” said Sam, “they’d never be able to shut it down, and face it, once this comes out the Internet will never, ever let it go. Hell, anonymous will have a field day.” 

Flynn confused. “What’s a torrent, and who’s anonymous?”

“It’s a peer-to-peer filesharing tool, and… Uh, that’s a little hard to explain. Picture a swarm of drunken bees, except the bees are people, and their stingers are SQL injections…” He paused. “Never mind, it’s a dumb analogy. The point is, the information can’t be contained once it’s out.”

The conversation continued in earnest between Sam and Alan and Flynn, and Clu came to realize he was no longer necessary to the proceedings. Eventually he wandered to the back of the car and up the stairs to the top of the transport. It was beautifully quiet up there, but for the low crackle of the sailer following its datastream. He looked down at the grey wisps of cloud drifting past. The I/O tower was a beacon on the horizon, brilliant white and huge, and Clu wasn’t sure he wanted to walk back through it. It would be easier if he stayed here, simpler, but he couldn’t do it. There was too much riding on him, now. He couldn’t leave Rinzler or Jarvis or any of his people to Montag or Hardington if it was within his power to break their hold. Clu laughed, low and quiet. Maybe he really was freeing them, this time.

The back of his neck prickled. He realized he was being watched. Clu turned his head. The ISO girl was standing there, in the shadow of the stairwell. He tilted his head, and set his feet a little more firmly. Just in case. “Did you come to push me off?”

“Kevin wouldn’t like it.”

“And otherwise?”

Quorra climbed up out of the stairwell and perched on the railing. “You hunted down my family, and my friends. I’m the only one you didn’t take apart.” She raised her chin, and it cast her eyes into shadow. “What do you think?”

“…Ah,” said Clu, and gave a moment of fervent thanks that Quorra held Flynn’s opinion in high esteem. “Then why are you here?”

“To watch you.”

Clu looked at the front of the transport, then the back. It was smooth and minimalistic, almost barren. At the front the sails bloomed out like a fractal flower, their edges flashing when they caught the light. “What could I possibly do from up here?”

“You’ve always got a backup plan, Clu.”

He shook his head. “Not this time.”

Nevertheless, she watched him as they approached their destination, and the longer it went on the more uncomfortable it was. Eventually he went back down into the car to escape her accusing eyes, but she followed him back there, too. The three others were still deep in conversation and so Clu was left with his hostile shadow. 

When they arrived at the I/O tower, Clu’s fear had bloomed into a terror that he kept under control only by virtue of long practice. Could he pretend well enough to survive? For how long? Would their plans work? Would Clu be found out and rectified and never think or worry about this whole mess again? He stood near the white pillar of the I/O tower and remembered walking through it the first time. It had been a rush, then, an adventure. Now he wasn’t so sure. 

Flynn and Alan went through first. Clu followed after, and Sam and Quorra took up the rear. When he stepped into the light he braced himself for the moment when he wasn’t sure if he existed at all, but it was something he never got used to. When he was reassembled into flesh it took him a confused minute to remember how all his pieces worked. He stepped out of the laser’s way and bumped into Alan. The room beneath the arcade was still a tiny, cramped little thing. 

Flynn held his hands out in front of him, flexing and unflexing them. He took a deep breath, apparently just because he wanted to. Clu watched him marvel at the dust on the ground, the dingy grey of the barred window, and the imperfect texture of the wall. “I almost forgot what it was like.”

“Better than the grid?” said Alan.

“Different. Just… Different.”

Alan’s car was still parked outside. There was room enough for the five of them, but Clu grit his teeth and said something he really, really didn’t want to. “Take me back to Encom.”

“…You don’t have to,” said Flynn.

Clu shook his head. He didn’t even know if Alan’s sketchy plan would work, but it was all they had. “You need time. They’ve still got Jarvis and R-“ he bit his tongue, for Flynn’s sake. “Tron, and who knows how many others. If I don’t go back they’ll know something’s up, and then the coverup will start, and I can guarantee we’ll all just disappear. I’m going back.”

“You’re sure?”

He wasn’t sure, not really, but it was too late to change his mind. He was committed. Alan opened the passenger door for him. They left Flynn, Sam and Quorra at the arcade- Alan promised to come right back for them- and Clu curled up in his seat and hoped the nervousness would subside. Alan looked over at him. Clu could tell there was still some dark emotion directed toward him, but it didn’t manifest in violence, and Clu supposed he could live with that. “How good of an actor are you?”

“I’ll have to be good enough,” Clu said grimly. “If this goes wrong…”

“I know.”

Clu told Alan about the base, and the padded prison they were kept in. Just in case. At least that way if things melted down, they might stand a chance of finding him before he disappeared.

They went back into the building the same way they’d come in. Alan parked, and Clu took what had to be the most nerve-wracking elevator ride of his life back up to where he was supposed to be. He pressed himself up against the elevator wall as the doors opened. The coast was clear. He took a step out into the hall, then another. Then he saw Montag coming around the corner.

Clu panicked. The elevator doors still hadn’t closed, but Montag hadn’t seen him yet, and Clu dashed down another corridor before Montag could spot him. The floor layout wasn’t straightforward. He could use that to his advantage. Clu wound through the halls until he found a washroom, and then he slipped into it. He eyed his reflection. He looked afraid, and Clu schooled the emotion out of his expression. What excuse had he used to get out of the meeting in the first place? A headache?

He turned on the tap and dabbed a little water around his hairline, just enough to make him look like he’d been sweating. He pressed his fingers into his cheeks to redden them, and relaxed his eyelids enough that they drooped a little. It completed the effect. He looked unhappy, on the verge of unwell. He took a deep breath, held it, and let it out. He could do this. He had to. He left the room and wandered until he heard footsteps.

“Clu?” Montag came around a corner and frowned at his sorry state. “Where have you been?”

Clu did his best to play his part. He smiled, feigned a wince. “Just walking.”

“Do you feel any better?”

“A little.” He shook his head. “I think I’m coming down with something.”

“Got a computer virus?” Montag was grinning at his own stupid joke, and Clu had to reign in the urge to punch him. Instead he feigned ignorance. Mostly so he wouldn’t have to pretend to laugh. 

“It doesn’t work like that.”

Montag still looked expectant, like he was waiting for Clu to get the joke, and Clu didn’t give him the satisfaction. Finally Montag rolled his eyes. “We’re about done, anyway. Time to go.”

He started walking, and it took a moment for Clu to realize that was meant to be an order; he fell into step behind Montag. As they passed the railing he got the sudden urge to just push Montag and watch him splatter on the hard tile below. He even swayed in Montag’s direction, raised his arm a little just to see if he could. The freedom of movement was delicious, even if he wasn’t actually going to follow through. For the first time in a long, long while his mind was clear. He could think, and plan, and the best part was that Montag didn’t know. He only had to keep up the charade and it would stay that way. If he couldn’t, well.

The thought was enough to make pretending at pain all too easy.


	13. Chapter 13

The next few days were hard. Clu struggled through his work, and it didn’t take him long to reacclimatize to asking how high whenever someone told him to jump. That wasn’t to say it was easy. Keeping a smile on his face every time someone told him to do something inane, or added another stack of paper to the ever-growing pile on his desk made him want to hit someone. He suspected that half of it wasn’t even meant for him. It was just mindless paperwork the users had discovered could be foisted off on someone who would never, ever complain. The worst part was that they wouldn’t leave him in peace. They kept talking to him, and he had to answer. Small talk. He hated small talk.

He kept his back straight and his head held high all through it, and he could only be thankful that it was Friday. He had to buy Flynn time. That was the other part of what wore him down- now that he’d had time to think about things, he didn’t know if their plans would work at all. It had seemed good at the time, but now… Would publicity be enough? Their only saving grace was that the users hadn’t yet figured out how to make new programs, only change old ones. Clu knew what his people looked like. He thought he could pick them all out of a crowd, even now. If they started making copies, he’d know.

Only maybe it wouldn’t stop them at all. Maybe they wouldn’t care, or maybe they’d figure out how new programs worked. Maybe they’d keep on with production. Maybe no one would believe Flynn in the first place.

There was no one around, and so Clu ignored what he was supposed to be doing and sat back in his chair. Sabotage was an option. Breaking their machines, or corrupting their databases, but was it feasible? They’d have backups. There were always backups, and even if they were all digital Encom or Montag or someone probably kept at least one copy on an isolated storage device. He flipped his pen in his hand. There had to be something he could do. Waiting around grated on him like nothing else. He couldn’t do anything that would be traced back to him, but that gave him a bit of freedom, too. As far as anyone else knew he was following orders. 

That thought made him fumble the pen. It clattered to his desk, and he very resolutely didn’t grin. He’d… Never thought of it that way, before- as far as the users knew, he was essentially a pawn. He was completely under the radar. All he needed was a scapegoat, a story, and a bit of groundwork. The question was where to start. Part of him- the sane part, maybe- said he should just sit and wait for Flynn to make his move, but Clu had never been good at patience.

Waiting for the motor pool car at the end of the day was a trial. The air was muggy and damp. Heat distortions rose from the pavement, and he couldn’t remember how he’d ever put up with it before. It didn’t help that Jarvis was waiting with him, and was apparently perfectly happy to chatter about how his day had been. Clu ignored him. He didn’t think Jarvis was really expecting a response, anyway. Idly, Clu wondered if there was a little voice inside Jarvis’ head, deep down, trying to tell him to snap out of it. Maybe not. Jarvis had always been tractable. They hadn’t changed him much, on the face of things- maybe the only difference in him was who he said ‘sir’ to.

When the car arrived it came with broken air conditioning. The ride home was miserable. Even their driver complained. Their prison’s entryway was a blessed cool patch between the outside and the courtyard, and by the time Clu got into their rooms, his clothes were clinging to him in the most unpleasant way. He stripped off his suit in pieces and left it in a haphazard trail to the shower. He didn’t have the patience to do more than that. A minute later he was standing naked in the bathtub, blessedly cool water coursing over him. He wondered if he could implement an analog to this in the grid. After spending so long with an organic body, he had to admit that the user world did have its upsides, small as they might be. Showers were one of them.

Clu scrubbed the sweat from his skin and the dirt from under his fingernails. It always accumulated, though he wasn’t sure how. After he was done he lingered under the water longer than strictly necessary. The shower was a good place to think. All day he’d been turning over ideas in his mind, and he’d come up with a short list. To rectify a program, the users needed four things- the laser, the program itself, an interface, and someone to do the rectification. The interface wasn’t a viable target. Computers were ubiquitous, and compromising one would just make them use another. The laser held promise. A failure, either in its programming or structural, would stall the project for months. But it was a risk. Most of the ways he could think of booby-trapping it without smashing it outright would turn the thing into a deathtrap. That left the programs and the programmers.

When he’d first come to his senses and realized what he’d been helping the users do, he’d wanted to kick himself. He’d betrayed his people with a smile on his face, made molding a program into a new shape so easy it was almost idiot-proof. Now it was an opportunity. The programmers weren’t the best and brightest. They didn’t have to be. Clu suspected Montag didn’t even want them to be. They were passable, and controllable, and that was enough. Most of the heavy lifting was left to Clu. Maybe sabotage would be as easy as submitting his next template a little early, with a few alterations. Still, that would only be temporary. The moment they caught it they’d fix it. It wasn’t enough.

He ran his hand through dripping hair and froze. The camera. He hadn’t cared when he’d been under orders not to, but now it was like an eye boring into his back. Clu forced himself to continue the motion like nothing had happened, and he turned a little. The lens was obscured by the shower curtain. It couldn’t see him, he was mostly sure. Still. His shower had just gotten a lot less enjoyable.

He turned off the water, fished a towel off the rack and wrapped it around himself before getting out of the tub. Clu picked up the discarded pieces of his suit on the way to get clean clothes. The cameras had doubtless seen him naked before, but he was damned if they were going to see it again. In the time he’d been… Clu wasn’t sure what to call it. Not himself, maybe- he’d catalogued six cameras spread throughout the suite. At the time he hadn’t known why he was doing it, only that it was important. Now it was invaluable. It might not have been all the cameras, but it was enough. He knew a few blind spots and where best to stand if you wanted to be seen. More importantly, he knew that only one camera covered most of the main room. It was concealed in the corner of a heavy cabinet. It was all too easy to casually drape his discarded shirt over the embedded lens. They wouldn’t suspect anything, not if he left the rest of the cameras alone. He was a good little soldier, after all.

Clu put on clean clothes and hung his suit in the closet. Bits of it still felt damp and he wrinkled his nose. He couldn’t even clean it. Some things could be washed in water but these had little tags instructing him not to, and every so often someone would collect his suits and return them the next day, smelling faintly chemical. He’d never bothered asking about it, but now he wondered what exactly they did. Did he want to know?

He settled in front of the television but couldn’t find anything that held his attention. He kept turning over ideas in his mind, considering and discarding them. Outside, the sun sank lower. The clouds turned red and gold. It reminded him of one of the first times they’d let him out on his own- he’d been tracked the whole way, probably, but they hadn’t been obvious about it- and he’d seen the sun hanging low and red over the ocean.

There was a sizzle behind him. “Ow,” said Jarvis. 

Clu turned his head. Jarvis was standing over the stove, the side of his thumb in his mouth. “What?”

“I burned myself a little. The butter’s spitting.”

The perpetual sir had been dropped from Jarvis’ vocabulary bit by bit. Now it only came out when he was under stress. Familiarity, Clu supposed. However, Jarvis had turned out to be an excellent cook, and it was more than enough to excuse the loss. They rarely had the same thing twice. Clu had never really thought about it before, but maybe it wasn’t just for the sake of feeding the three of them. Maybe Jarvis was as desperate to escape as Clu was, and this was a desire for change seeping out in the only way he had control over? 

Or maybe he was overthinking it and Jarvis just liked cooking. 

“What are you making?”

“Lemon shrimp on rice.”

Clu struggled to remember what a shrimp was. “The little fishy… Things… With the shells?” 

“Those ones,” said Jarvis, and poured a bowl of the dark grey creatures into the pan. They hissed and steamed and started turning pink around the edges. It still threw Clu for a loop when he thought of how much of user food involved killing and consuming another life form. Whether it came from things with legs or things that grew in the ground, the entirety of user existence seemed to be based around a race to devour as much as possible before you were devoured in turn. He made a point of not thinking about where his food came from, because frankly, it disturbed him a little to imagine his body disassembling dead matter and incorporating it into itself. Rinzler liked shrimp and fish, though, and Jarvis found that funny for a reason Clu could never quite get him to articulate.

Now that he was sitting here his journey back to the grid hardly seemed real. Clu kept half expecting to wake up and find it had all been a dream. The only proof was that he no longer had to do and think exactly what he was told to, and that was- it was amazing, really, but dangerous. He dreaded the moment he knew would come when he’d miss an order or be issued one he couldn’t follow, and it would all fall apart.

Hands appeared on his shoulders and there was heat and a purr at his shoulder. Clu tilted his head up and back. “Rinzler?”

Rinzler leaned over the back of the couch, and all Clu could see was the wicked curve of his mouth. The purr deepened, and Rinzler’s tongue traced a teasing stripe along the outside shell of Clu’s ear before disappearing completely. By the time Clu had managed to turn around Rinzler was halfway across the room, leaning around Jarvis to look at what he was cooking. Jarvis elbowed him out of the way. “Bad cat.”

It was still weird seeing Rinzler without his helmet, and weirder still seeing him in the sleek black suit that had become his uniform. He had a whole set of them. Sometimes he came home with blood soaked into the cuffs, and they’d just be replaced. Clu didn’t like to think about that. If things worked out as they were supposed to, would Flynn turn Rinzler back into Tron? Could he? The thought left a shaky, hollow place inside him. He- he didn’t know if it was possessiveness, anymore. Having Rinzler at his side had always meant something, but now it was different. There was comfort in his arms, and when Rinzler was curled up next to him at night, low purr echoing in his chest, it made him feel like everything was going to be all right. If they merged into one, would he be Tron or Rinzler or someone else entirely, made of them both? Clu didn’t know if he could bear seeing Rinzler’s face and knowing that the man behind it hated every fiber of his being. 

But if Tron was still deep beneath Rinzler, struggling to surface, could Clu leave him there in good conscience?

As Jarvis was spooning out butter and lemon and shrimp over the rice, Clu got up and rummaged through the cupboards. Their liquor collection was meager and mostly used for cooking. Clu thought that was half because the military wasn’t willing to supply enough to foster any kind of addiction, and half because none of them had had the drive to get used to it when at first taste, most of it was bitter and strong. The effects of the alcohol had reminded him of the drinks at End of Line. It wasn’t exactly the same- in fact it was the opposite, alcohol making things soft and slow where on the grid it had made everything fast and bright- but it was similar enough that he’d persisted until he found a drink he liked. Clu’s personal favorite was rum and coke. Its molasses sweetness was enough to dampen the ethanol taste but it had enough of a kick to- before- shut down the place at the back of his mind that was always unhappy. Now it would just be a pleasant sensation. He mixed one for himself and then, on a whim, two more.

He set them down on the table. Jarvis was close behind him with the plates. “Special occasion?”

“…Nothing, really.”

“Mm,” Jarvis sat, “do rum and shellfish really go together?”

“Why wouldn’t they? It’s made on islands. Shrimp live in the sea.” 

Jarvis gave him a look, and Clu gave it right back. His logic was perfectly sound.

The food was good, even if Rinzler had the distracting habit of pulling the shrimp out of their shells with his teeth and licking his fingers clean. Clu caught himself watching those pink fingertips disappear into Rinzler’s mouth more than once, and he kept himself from dwelling on it by topping up everyone’s glass when they ran dry. It was, maybe, not the smartest thing he could have done. By the time they were finished he was drunk enough to be clumsy and warm, everything in soft focus, and he wasn’t even sure how much he’d had. He stacked his plate in the sink with over-exaggerated care to keep from dropping it.

Clu sat down on the couch. It felt so soft that he had to lie down and feel the texture under his hands. The world was slow and pleasant, even if he was having trouble concentrating on anything for more than a few minutes at a time. He drifted in a haze and only snapped out of it when Rinzler crawled into his lap.

Rinzler had two points of color high on his cheeks, and his eyes were half-lidded. He’d probably drunk about as much as Clu had. Maybe more. It was hard to tell. Rinzler sat up and straddled him, his purr a languid rumble. He worked his hands up Clu’s shirt, ran them up his sides, and shoved the fabric up enough to lean down and mouth a stripe along Clu’s ribs. Clu hissed when he used his teeth. He brought his hands up to tangle in Rinzler’s hair and drag him up into a kiss, open-mouthed and filthy. Rinzler was already half-hard. Clu could feel it pressing up against his hip. Rinzler grinned at him from up close, and rather than enjoying it, everything started feeling… Wrong. Flynn’s words came back to him. Even if Rinzler had started it, was Tron in there, too? He pictured Tron as a small, angry, terrified voice caged deep inside Rinzler, just as Clu had been caged inside himself, and it was enough to make him set his palms on Rinzler’s chest and push him away. Rinzler went along with it at first, maybe thinking of it as a game, but when Clu’s intent became clear Rinzler frowned and redoubled his efforts. He caught Clu’s wrist and sucked two fingers into his mouth. He swirled his tongue around them like he’d suck a cock, and didn’t break eye contact.

Clu groaned, despite himself. His cock twitched. How was he supposed to resist this? Still, he twisted, and Rinzler was drunk enough that Clu was able to tip him mostly off the couch. Rinzler made an offended sound. There was a noise off to the side, and Clu looked up to see that Jarvis had wandered back into the room.

“Um,” said Jarvis, and jabbed his thumb back the way he came. “I’ll just be, uh, not here.” 

There was a look on Rinzler’s face that Clu didn’t know if he’d ever seen before. It was predatory and calculating and- not mean, but vicious. In a flash Rinzler was on his feet and across the room, crowding Jarvis against the doorframe. 

Jarvis looked like a deer in the headlights. “What-?” 

Rinzler cast a look back at Clu. His purr was low and throbbing, and his mouth had a sharp twist to it that said I dare you to stop me. He cut Jarvis off with a kiss and Jarvis’ eyes went wide. His hands curled around Jarvis’ hips and steered him into a better viewing position for Clu. Clu was too stunned to do anything. He knew his mouth was hanging open but couldn’t muster the brainpower to close it. When the kiss broke, Rinzler shoved Jarvis back against the wall, and Jarvis took a gasping breath.

“R- Rinzler,” said Jarvis, “why are- what are you doing?” Rinzler dropped to his knees and undid Jarvis’ pants with his teeth, still pinning him to the wall by his hips. “You can’t just-“ Jarvis’ words turned into a choked moan as Rinzler, with another sidelong look at Clu, pushed Jarvis’ clothes out of the way and swallowed his cock. Clu could see Jarvis’ knees tremble as they almost went out from under him. Jarvis braced himself against the wall with one arm. The other went to rest on Rinzler’s head like he wasn’t sure whether or not he wanted to push Rinzler away. The noises Rinzler was making were obscene, little wet sounds and a purr that Clu knew from experience that Jarvis would be able to feel. He could see Jarvis’ rapidly hardening cock disappearing in and out of Rinzler’s mouth, slick and glistening with saliva. Jarvis was biting his lip so hard Clu thought it might bleed. “You- nngh-“

Rinzler drew back and Jarvis’ cock came out of his mouth with a wet pop. Jarvis still looked shellshocked, but he didn’t resist when Rinzler stood and started stripping him. He was theatrical about it. Rinzler pulled Jarvis’ shirt over his head and used it to tangle up Jarvis’ arms, pulling up until Jarvis was stretched out and standing on his toes before letting go. When he leaned down to push Jarvis’ pants down his hips Jarvis’ hands came up, still uncertain, and started undoing the buttons on Rinzler’s shirt. Rinzler let him fumble at it for a little while before reaching up and just pulling it off. A button pinged away somewhere, never to be seen again, and Rinzler laughed. Clu knew this was for his benefit, for whatever reason. He should say something. If only he could manage to string two words together.

Rinzler steered Jarvis onto the other couch and set him up on his hands and knees. Rinzler climbed up behind him and ran his hand over the curve of Jarvis’s ass. He gave Clu another look that dared him to get involved and Jarvis caught him looking.

“Don’t use me to make him jealous,” Jarvis panted, and Rinzler ignored him. He ducked down and ran his tongue down the crack of Jarvis’ ass, and still looking at Clu out of the corner of his eye, pushed in. Jarvis gave a ragged shout and Clu was so hard it almost hurt. Jarvis squirmed, and made little gasping sounds that made Clu wonder how he’d ever gone without hearing them before. He could see Jarvis’ face, eyes shut and mouth working, never quite closing, as Rinzler fucked him with his tongue. Jarvis reached down a hand to touch himself and Rinzler knocked it away. The motion turned into Rinzler running his nails up the back of Jarvis’ thighs, leaving white-red stripes. Jarvis whimpered, bitten back behind his teeth. 

When Rinzler withdrew Jarvis moaned at the loss until Rinzler replaced his tongue with his fingers, barely moving until Jarvis made a frustrated noise in his throat and started rocking back against him with abandon. Rinzler’s steady purr was a sharp contrast to the stuttering noises Jarvis made, barely verbal. Rinzler added a third spit-slick finger, then a fourth, and tilted Jarvis’ hips so Clu could see every inch of the stretch and pull. Clu’s throat felt suddenly dry. Any fleeting thought of Tron was gone from his mind. When he managed to speak it was in a low and needy rasp, and even then only a single word. “Rinzler.”

Jarvis’ eyes were shut, his back curved, and a sheen of sweat made Clu want to run his hands over that skin, taste the salt in the hollow of his throat. Abruptly Rinzler pulled his fingers out. Jarvis’ eyes flew open. “Are you stopping?” He pressed back against Rinzler. “Don’t stop.” 

Rinzler stood and pulled Jarvis to his feet. When Jarvis didn’t want to get up Rinzler cajoled him with soft noises. It was only a few feet to the other couch, but to Clu it felt like they were crossing miles. Rinzler deposited Jarvis on Clu, in the same position Rinzler had been in when this had all began, and Clu tried not to come in his pants like an idiot. Jarvis’ cock brushed against Clu’s belly, leaving a trail of precum smeared across his skin. The other program was biting his lip again. Rinzler gave them a growl that said stay there or wait or don’t move, and Clu couldn’t do anything but obey. Jarvis wasn’t exactly looking at Clu, like he wasn’t sure it was allowed. Then Rinzler slipped out of the rest of his clothes- the most graceful bit of stripping Clu had ever seen, and how was that fair, honestly- and both their eyes were on him.

Rinzler knelt and spread his legs, his cock thick and heavy in between them. After a second Clu realized he was fucking himself open on his own fingers. Rinzler’s head fell back, exposing the knotted white scar on his throat. His eyes were half-shut. Bits of dark hair stuck to his skin. Clu thought that he could be happy if this moment went on for the rest of his life. When Rinzler stopped, he climbed onto the couch behind Jarvis, a rumbling purr in his throat and a self-satisfaction written all over his face. Rinzler pulled Clu’s pants down just enough to free his erection, and spat into his hand. Clu hissed as Rinzler ran it up and down Clu’s cock, just enough to tease. 

Then Rinzler shifted forward to take Clu’s cock in his ass like he’d been built for it. For a second Clu couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe; there was only Rinzler, and the only real thing in the world to him was the point where their bodies met. Clu moaned and jerked his hips up, but he was already fully inside Rinzler. Rinzler made a pleased noise anyway. 

Clu reached forward but the thighs he caught hold of were Jarvis’. Jarvis looked down at Clu like he couldn’t quite believe this was happening, and Rinzler gave Clu a look over Jarvis’ shoulder that was positively devilish. Rinzler’s fingers dug white furrows in Jarvis’ thighs, and Clu got the idea. He helped lift Jarvis up and onto Rinzler’s cock. The sound Rinzler made was almost lost under Jarvis’ sharp groan. “S- sir.”

Jarvis shut his eyes. Rinzler gave him a moment, and didn’t move until Jarvis hissed and rocked back. His cock bobbed against Clu’s belly and Clu thrust upward experimentally. It pushed him into Rinzler, and Rinzler into Jarvis, and Jarvis made a sound that might have been a moan or a word and fell forward to brace himself against Clu. The tip of his cock grazed Clu’s stomach with every thrust. It left a wet trail and Clu found himself trying to wring those wordless noises out of Jarvis. He sounded so different from Rinzler, so much more vocal. Clu ran his nails down Jarvis’ back, rolled Jarvis’ nipples between his fingers until they were hard peaks, left a red ring of bite marks on each shoulder. No matter what he did, it just seemed to make Jarvis press closer. Clu could feel his thrusts getting more and more erratic. He was close. He was so close.

There was a low noise from Rinzler. Clu saw him lean into Jarvis, wrap a hand around Jarvis’ cock and start jerking him off. Jarvis’ arms shook. Clu pulled him down and licked a line up the side of his throat. He tasted of salt and clean skin.

“Please,” Jarvis gasped, “sir-“

“What do you want?” The look on his face was something Clu wanted to burn into his mind. He’d never considered that Jarvis could look this good, his mouth starkly pink and his body arching up against him.

“More.” 

Clu kissed him, dragged on his lower lip with his teeth and ran his hands up the insides of Jarvis’ thighs. Rinzler rumbled something that might have been halfway to a word against the back of Jarvis’ neck. There was a sharp gasp and yelp from Jarvis. Then he was pressing his head down against Clu’s collarbone, and coming in Rinzler’s hand and across Clu’s belly in white streaks, his back in a sharp arch. That was all Clu needed. Then he was gone, mindlessly thrusting up into Rinzler’s ass as he came. Everything was a blissful haze but Rinzler hung on a little longer, fucking himself on Clu’s cock, still buried in Jarvis with his head thrown back, eyes shut, and his mouth half open. He curled around Jarvis and made a sound when he came that was garbled, and barely human, and utterly content.

They lay there like that for a while, in a tangle of limbs. Clu couldn’t have put together a coherent thought if he’d wanted to. Rinzler shifted to the side a little so at least Clu didn’t have the weight of two people crushing down on him. He found himself running idle hands along bare skin. It didn’t matter who it belonged to. 

As rational thought gradually set in- that was when the little voice of guilt decided to speak up. He wasn’t supposed to have done this. He could blame the alcohol, but really he hadn’t had the force of will to just get up and walk away. It was incredibly hard to fight against Rinzler when he wanted something, Clu realized, but he should have… He didn’t know what. Left the rooms entirely? Ordered Rinzler to stop, for his own sake?

Rinzler had his own way of being insistent. If Clu said no and no again, he didn’t know if Rinzler would take it for an answer. He’d just find a way to change that no to a yes. Their power balance had shifted somewhere along the way and Rinzler had figured that out before he did. Did that count as Rinzler taking advantage of him, or the other way around? That didn’t even begin to figure Jarvis into the equation. He was in no fit state to think about it more deeply.

He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do now. Frankly, sleep seemed like a fantastic idea. But he was sticky, and sweaty, and now that he’d pulled out of Rinzler he could feel smears of his own come cooling on his skin. It would dry, and then it would itch, and the thought of it was too annoying to let it actually happen. He tried to extricate himself from the tangle and the movement was enough to make Jarvis open his eyes. Jarvis looked down at himself, then at Clu, and then at Rinzler. He made a noise that Clu translated- after cycles of interpreting Rinzler-speak- as oh god what and buried his face in the couch.

“Users,” Jarvis cursed, his voice muffled, “I can’t believe that just happened.”

Rinzler was still halfway curled around him, and made a sound like laughter as he ran a hand up Jarvis’ back. He coaxed Jarvis into lifting his head, but Jarvis still wouldn’t look Clu in the face. He was blushing furiously, and Clu decided it was a look he liked. Jarvis was so pale, otherwise. “Jarvis.”

“S… Sir?”

“Move a little. I want to take a shower.” For the second time in as many hours, Clu noted, but he needed it. Jarvis shifted and Clu struggled out from beneath the pile. He got to his feet and found the room listing gently around him. He straightened up, cracked his back, and took a couple of steps. There was the sound behind him of someone else getting up, and he looked back to see Rinzler standing and tugging Jarvis to his feet. Apparently they were all going.

Clu hesitated at the bathroom door and thought of the camera in the corner. Rinzler seemed to know exactly what he was thinking and slipped in ahead of him. He turned the hot water on full blast until the room filled with steam and the mirror was too fogged to see into. The camera lens would be no better off. Clu adjusted the water to a more reasonable temperature and stepped in. Jarvis followed, nudged into place by Rinzler. Jarvis was walking a little oddly and all of a sudden Clu wanted to laugh. If anyone had told him that this was a situation he’d end up in, ever, he’d never have believed it.

He realized Jarvis was staring at him. Staring at his stomach, to be more precise, which was still smeared with Jarvis’ come. Clu scrubbed at it with his fingernails and it washed away. “What?”

It startled Jarvis out of his distraction. “Is this, um,” he ran his tongue along his lip, “is this a thing, now?”

“A thing?”

“You know,” said Jarvis, and Clu didn’t. He stared blankly at Jarvis until the other program looked uncomfortable. “Never mind.”

Rinzler moved in close behind Jarvis, let his chin rest on Jarvis’ shoulder and purred in his ear. Jarvis looked a little happier. 

Maybe Flynn was right. Clu had changed. He wasn’t sure how, or when it had happened, but he wasn’t the same person he’d been for a thousand cycles beforehand. Maybe he’d keep changing, and he didn’t know what he’d become, but the thought didn’t scare him anymore. There were worse things.

Something occurred to him and he stilled. He’d changed. He’d changed, and that opened something to him that he’d never thought to try before. He couldn’t be a user, but he could be a programmer.

There was muffled laughter from behind him and he turned to see Jarvis washing Rinzler’s hair. The noises he made while getting a scalp massage were only a shade less obscene than the noises he made while sucking cock. The bite marks Clu had left on Jarvis’ shoulders were already turning purple and dark; they were stark against his pale skin, and Clu filed that away for future reference. Rinzler didn’t bruise easily. Clu wondered what it would be like to have someone who did. What kind of shapes he could make.

Later, Jarvis hesitated beside their bed like he wasn’t sure if he had to ask permission or if he was even supposed to be there. Clu pulled him down by his wrist before he could ask. He was too tired to deal with questions, or Jarvis being Jarvis. Rinzler shifted over to make room for him, and it was crowded, but they all fit.

In his head, Clu wrote code. Perfect strings of purpose, tailor-made to eat away at systems from the inside.


	14. Chapter 14

The weekend ended and Clu went back to work, back to following orders. The program in his head, little more than code he didn’t dare write down, took shape. He realized partway through that he wasn’t building a program, exactly. He was building a virus. A thing with teeth, and if it worked as planned it would ravage its way through the army’s systems, and when it found a network connection, Encom’s. He finished a first version and found it too general. Too blunt. It had no subtlety. Clu scrapped it and started over. It had to work unobtrusively; its strikes had to be surgical and precise. His second version was better but still not good enough. He started again.

Every day he wondered which plan would go into action first, his or Flynn’s. Every day he expected to wake up to either newfound freedom or a gun in his face. Neither happened. It made him nervous. He should have heard something by now, anything. It didn’t help that there was another scheduled meeting with Encom’s board. Clu suffered through it, and when they were leaving, saw Alan out of the corner of his eye. They very studiously paid no attention to each other.

He put the finishing touches on his mental program a week later. Wednesday. It was the seventh iteration and a beast of a thing, vicious and sleek. More importantly, it was almost invisible. Once active on a system it could barely be seen, or rooted out. At least that was what Clu hoped- he hadn’t exactly had the chance for live testing, but looking at code from the inside was almost the same as looking at it from the outside, and he’d had a lot of experience. Hopefully that would be enough.

He got up from his desk at just after noon, tucked his laptop under his arm, and walked in the general direction of the cafeteria. At the last minute he turned and went down a different set of stairs. No one looked at him twice. He was a known quantity; the guards knew him by sight, and he had the all-powerful ID card clipped to his lapel that granted him clearance to where he needed to be. Still, he could hear his heart pounding in his ears for all the adrenaline. He second-guessed himself the whole way down, but he couldn’t turn back. He was going ahead with this if it killed him. 

Clu opened the door into Hellard’s lab. As always it was blindingly bright, but if there was one thing he’d always liked about this room it was that like all the good probably-illegal-secret-project headquarters, it had no surveillance. There were no cameras, no microphones in the walls. As far as he’d ever been able to tell the computers didn’t even have keyloggers installed. Hellard was gone. At lunch, presumably, and the only person left behind was an assistant. Clu didn’t recognize him. He must have been new. All the better for Clu’s purposes. Clu took a second to steady himself, put his mind in a different setting, and fell into the amiable, eager-to-please personality that was disturbingly easy to copy, even now. 

“Hello,” Clu smiled, “have you seen Dr. Hellard? 

The assistant blinked at him. “He’s out at lunch.”

“…Oh,” Clu frowned, and let a little nervousness seep into his posture, “oh, no. General Montag won’t be happy. He wants the new templates updated now. I can’t wait around for Dr. Hellard.” Clu lifted the laptop a little. “Would you mind if I…?”

The mention of a General threw the man off, but not enough to let Clu actually touch the machines. “You don’t have clearance.”

“I do, actually.” Clu indicated his ID card. It listed his name as C. L. Underwood, which wasn’t so bad in the grand scheme of things. “I know I’m not supposed to work on it without Dr. Hellard here, but between you and me, the General’s getting impatient.” He leaned toward the assistant, and made a show of making sure they were alone. “Don’t tell Hellard I said this, but I heard he might be getting replaced soon. The General doesn’t think he’s good enough.” He leaned in a little closer. “If the results don’t pick up, the funding’s going to get cut. I mean, you and I know that science doesn’t progress overnight, but these military types…”

The assistant looked a little nervous. “The funding? But I just got hired on. If they axe the project, then-”

“I know! And I’d be in the same boat, except the General-“ he dropped to a whisper. “He… No, you don’t want to know.”

“What?”

“It’s just…” Clu checked behind himself again. Nobody there. “You don’t want to attract his attention. Trust me.” The assistant’s morbid curiosity was piqued. Clu could see it. “You know what we’re working on here, right? You’re not that new?”

“Yeah…?”

“Well, I heard that the people they change with that machine? They’re not all artificial. One of Hellard’s old assistants got an attack of conscience. He was going to go public, but they caught him before it happened. Williamson, I think his name was?” Clu’s voice was a low whisper. “They put him in that machine, and when he came out…”

Now the assistant was looking a little scared. “But I know Williamson. He works over in chemical engineering. He loves his country, he wouldn’t leak a project.”

Clu cursed mentally. He should have picked a more exotic name, but he could run with it. “He does now.” Clu let his gaze drift to the laser, sitting there in the middle of the room. “That thing scares the hell out of me.” He paused. “But I’m sure they wouldn’t do anything to you. Not just for a project delay.”

The assistant was quiet, and Clu let the silence drag out. When he seemed on the point of speaking Clu looked at his watch and sighed. 

“Look, I have to go. The General’s got to know that his update’s just not going to happen today.” He turned on his heel. Clu took one step, two, three, and then-

“Wait!”

Clu didn’t smile at all, not even a little bit. “What?”

“You can…” He looked at Hellard’s private station in the back. “Just this once. And don’t tell anybody.” Clu breathed a sigh of relief that was only half faked.

“God, thanks. You’re a lifesaver.” Clu slid into place. The station was password protected, but he’d seen Hellard type it in enough times that it wasn’t a problem. He added the new template first. It was exactly the same as the old one, except for a few key lines. Then he opened a new window and started typing. His program spilled from his hands. It was like reshaping a program in the grid, but different. Freer. He was making something new, right here, by himself. A feeling like pride welled in him. When he was finished he took a moment to admire the plaintext before he let it run.

It disappeared into the system immediately. Clu deleted the uncompiled version, set his laptop down by the monitor, and plugged in the connection cables. The assistant wandered over. “What are you doing?”

“Just making sure the copy is echoed properly,” Clu said cheerfully, and watched as his virus infected the laptop. Then he disconnected it. “That looks just fine. You’ve been so much help. What’s your name?”

“Uh,” said the assistant, “Rutherford. Dan Rutherford.”

“Well, thanks, Dan.” Clu held out his hand. Rutherford shook it, hesitantly. “I’ve got to go make my report to General Montag. I’ll put in a good word for you.”

“…Please don’t.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.” Rutherford grimaced. “Pretty sure.”

“If that’s the way you want it. Just… If anyone asks you about Williamson, you didn’t hear it from me, all right? If the General finds out I was telling you about this, I’ll be next in line for, uh.” He tipped his head in the laser’s direction. “Testing.” 

Rutherford nodded. Clu kept his serious face on until he got to the stairwell, and then he allowed himself a second of mad glee where no one would see it. The virus would lie dormant on the lab systems until later, but now it was time for part two of his plan. It was possibly the easiest part, given that part one had gone off without a hitch. When he got to his desk, all he did was set the laptop down, connect it to the network and let it run. There was no indication that anything was happening, but that was the way it was supposed to be. He’d trust in his program to do what it was meant to. The virus would hop from there, spreading from system to system and waiting for the right time. Clu had to admit he was growing fond of his program; he should name it, really, but he couldn’t think of anything appropriate. Maybe he’d let it name itself. 

He left again. This time he actually went to the cafeteria. He was hungry, and the food wasn’t the best, but unless he wanted a meal of Fanta and Doritos from the vending machine it was all there was. Clu picked out the least sad-looking turkey sandwich from the lineup and swiped his ID card through the reader. When he went to sit down he found someone waving him over. He waved back with artificial cheer. That was the strangest thing about being himself again. Apparently he’d made friends with some of the users while he’d been an automaton. Not close friends, but enough for hellos and small talk and eating together. He couldn’t remember how he’d met them. They were low-ranking, and Clu doubted they knew what he was. His ID proclaimed him a civilian contractor, anyway, and he’d never thought to contradict it. Clu sat down with them. One of the women moved to the side a little, to make a space. 

“Clue! Haven’t seen you in days, man. The brass working you hard?” 

“Oh, you know.” Clu popped his sandwich out of its protective plastic packaging. “It’s business as usual.”

“So yeah?”

He rolled his eyes and took a bite out of his sandwich. It wasn’t great. Too much mayonnaise, and the bread was going stale. “Officers are officers. Everything’s got to be done yesterday, no matter what it is. I had to spend the last half hour making software updates for Dr. Hellard that really could have waited, but,” he shrugged, “orders.”

A man reached across the table and plucked a French fry off the woman’s tray. “I hear that. What they got you working on, anyway?”

“It’s all secret. You know that.”

“Everything’s secret. Hell, What I had for breakfast? Secret. How many pairs of socks they issued me last year? Top secret. The color of Holloway’s panties? President’s eyes only.”

The woman punched him in the shoulder. “Blue, asshole. Stop stealing my lunch.” 

Clu was reasonably sure that most of them thought he was a cryptographer. They treated his name like a nickname of uncertain origin. The whole conversation, though, had been for the benefit of the man across the table. Clu wasn’t sure exactly how the hierarchy worked, but the man was one of Montag’s distant subordinates. He didn’t know if the man had been ordered to report on Clu or if he was just talkative, but more than once Montag had seemed to know about things Clu had said or done before Clu himself had told him. Several months’ experimentation had given him this man as the only common denominator. Before, it had been little more than a curiosity- he’d had nothing to hide. Now it was a tool.

One of the other men tapped his fork on his lunch tray. “Hey, did you hear? There's a rumor that Kevin Flynn's back from the dead."

Clu froze.

"That's stupid," said Holloway, "it's like seeing Elvis. He's been dead for decades. It's just the Flynn Lives weirdoes."

"Is not. There are pictures."

"Pictures better than, like, National Enquirer level?"

"Uh..."

"That's what I thought. Dude's dead." She laughed and jerked her thumb at Clu. “Or they saw him. I swear, are you his illegitimate kid or something?”

“Oh,” said Clu, “you know. I just have one of those faces.” He kept eating, mechanically, to avoid attracting attention. If there were rumors, then Flynn still hadn't done anything publicly. On the other hand, if there were rumors, that meant he was no longer under the radar. The rest of his plans would play out, or they wouldn’t. He didn’t know how that would intersect with Flynn, but all he could do was keep working until he succeeded, or Flynn succeeded, or the whole thing went into meltdown.

**

Clu whiled away the afternoon at his desk. He filled out just enough of his paperwork that it didn’t look like he was slacking off, and his impatience was creeping back in. Surely word had spread. Surely his virus had finished its first task. It was almost a relief when Montag appeared in his doorway at half past three. He didn’t look happy, but Clu just gave him a placid smile. “Sir?”

Montag stepped into the office and closed the door behind him. “Did you or did you not update the rectification template today?”

“Yes sir. Why? Is there a problem?” He’d been through it several times in his head, and came to the conclusion that this was the best possible way to avoid suspicion. There was trying to hide that he’d done anything at all, and he knew that would be a big fat red flag waving over his head the second anyone found out, and there was trying to hide some of it, but if he didn’t try to hide anything, he was operating as usual. There was no reason to suspect him. Look how helpful I am, he projected at Montag, look how much you can trust me.

Montag crossed his arms. “It wasn’t scheduled to happen until next week.”

“Oh. Well, Dr. Hellard was quite insistent. I’ll admit, I’m not sure what some of the changes he wanted were for, but you know how it is with him- no point in asking questions. I thought you ordered it?”

“I didn’t.” Montag’s expression darkened. “What changes were made, specifically?”

“I…” Clu opened his mouth, then closed it. “…I don’t remember.” He let discomfort flicker across his face. “He must have told me not to, but I’m sure he had his reasons. Dr. Hellard’s a good man. You can check the full version against the archived backups, though. It’s the most current on the system.”

“Pull it up. I want to see it.”

“I can’t.” Clu nudged his laptop. “I don’t have clearance to access the archives. You’d have to open it up yourself from the server rooms.”

Montag frowned. “Can you remember anything about it? Anything at all?”

“Not… Not really?” Clu touched his head. “It’s all a little blurry. I remember making the update itself, but-“ he paused. Made himself look uncertain. “I think I spoke to his new assistant. Rutherford? The one with, you know, the ears.” 

There was something in Montag’s eyes, something like the beginnings of suspicion, but as far as Clu could tell it wasn’t directed at him. “What about?”

“Nothing important. Just rumors- I wouldn’t want to drag the doctor’s name through the mud. You know how it is when people are in close quarters like this, gossip spreads over every little thing. None of them could possibly be true, anyway.”

“Tell me, Clu.”

“Well… Rutherford said he heard that someone was experimenting with rectifying people instead of programs. Now, I’ve heard the same rumor before, and I told him that I heard the subject was Williamson from chemical engineering, but it’s a ridiculous premise, anyway. He’s never even worked in the same department.” Clu shook his head. “The strangest thing was, he thought you were ordering it done. I know you’d never do something like that, sir.”

“Me.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Get up,” said Montag, “we’re going to pay the doctor a little visit.”

Clu followed Montag out into the hall, and never once let his innocent mask slip. Underneath he was nearly having a panic attack. This was the most dangerous part of his plan, the part that involved relying on mutual human distrust and that the virus he’d inserted into the system had done its work. He’d hoped that it would happen without him around, but if things went south, maybe it was better that he was tagging along. His mouth was the only asset he had just then. He had to hope that he could talk his way out of anything that came up.

Of course, his mouth was what tended to get him into trouble in the first place, so who knew how much use that would be.

When they arrived at the workroom Montag went in first. When Clu followed, he found the room full of busily-working scientists. Rutherford caught his eye and Clu winced, shrugged, and tipped his head in Montag’s direction. Rutherford paled and put a table full of monitors between him and the General.

Hellard lifted his head. “General? This is an unscheduled visit.”

“I like to keep an eye on my projects,” said Montag, “I’ll just check some things over, if you don’t mind.”

“…Feel free,” said Hellard, but he looked uncertain, and kept casting glances over to where Montag roped an assistant- not Rutherford, but it might as well have been, they were a faceless white-coated mass for all Clu was concerned- into pulling up the newest iteration of the template. It filled the screen in lines of code, just as Clu had written it.

“I want to see the archived copies, too.” The assistant complied. Clu bit the inside of his cheek. This was the moment of truth. 

The screen stayed blank and the assistant frowned. When he tried again all he got was an error report. It was a string of meaningless letters and numbers, but at the end of it was the message that made Clu want to grin. File corrupt.

Montag frowned. “Do you know anything about this, Clu?”

“Not a thing, sir.”

Montag waved Hellard over. “Dr. Hellard, what is this?” 

Hellard took one look at the message and swore. “The backups are corrupt? Let me just-“ He tried opening the file again and got the same message. “Oh, hell. This is just fantastic.”

“Can they be restored?”

“We’ve got another set of backups on disk, sir. Rutherford!”

Rutherford stood up straight. “Yes?”

“Go get isolated backup drive E from the archives.”

Rutherford left, and as Hellard cursed the computer and its makers, Montag looked calm and thoughtful. That was a dangerous look, Clu knew, and Clu kept out of the way as best he was able. When Rutherford came back with an external drive in his hands they plugged it in, turned it on, and Clu had to hide an errant bit of laughter in a cough. They were infecting their own backup drives, and sure enough, when the drive showed up on the desktop, it contained nothing but a worthless mess of gibberish.

“What the hell is going on here?” said Hellard, and he didn’t notice the considering look Montag was giving him.

“I’ll leave you to it,” said Montag, “maybe I’ll come back when you’ve fixed your computer problems.” The sound of Hellard’s muffled cursing followed them out into the hall, and Montag abandoned Clu at his desk and didn’t speak another word to him all day. 

A fine start, all in all.

**

Thursday went by slowly. In the late morning, Montag called Clu into his office and presented him with a printout. Clu gave it a once-over. It was a text copy of the new template he’d uploaded to the system the day before.

“The backups are gone,” Montag said, “this is all that’s left.”

“All the backups?” Clu raised his eyebrows. “How did that happen?”

“File corruption. Allegedly.”

Clu frowned. He flipped through the stack of papers and didn’t bother reading them; he knew what they said. “That’s not generally something that just happens.”

“I know. If it hadn’t been for you we’d never have known they were missing. The autoupdater would have overwritten the backups with the new file, and no one would have been the wiser.” Montag steepled his fingers. “Today Dr. Hellard’s been reporting computer failures across the board.”

“And… Where do I come into it?”

“He’s hiding something. The question is what,” said Montag, “Clu, tell me what he ordered you to change.”

This was going to be… Interesting. “I’m sorry, sir, I…” Clu winced, and touched his temple. He remembered the pain that disobeying an order caused, even if he had no way of fulfilling it, and it wasn’t hard to pretend. “I don’t- I remember putting it on the system, but what it was, exactly… It’s not there. I can’t remember.” He hissed through his teeth. “It hurts.”

“Never mind that last order, then.”

Clu kept his eyes pressed shut. Held the bridge of his nose. He gave it a minute to make it convincing, and then he looked up. “What do you want me to do, then?” Montag tapped the printout. 

“Go through this. Tell me if anything seems different.”

Clu started reading through the printout. Inside, he was laughing. There were perks to being trusted, even if those perks mostly extended to being able to fuck people over with perfect efficiency. He hadn’t actually changed much of the programming. What he had changed was next to meaningless to just about anyone who’d care to look. If they fought through the thicket of roundabout code they’d find what was essentially an open port for another program to fit into- one that didn’t actually exist, but no one needed to know that. Clu pointed it out, eventually. He couldn’t make it look easy, after all. “The only real new piece that I can find is this.”

Montag looked it over. Clu could tell it meant nothing to him. “And what is it for?”

“I’m not sure, sir.” He spread the sheets out over Montag’s desk. “It’s like a… A socket.” Montag didn’t look impressed.

“A socket.”

“To fit something else into,” said Clu, “a new protocol, or a program. It’s not really for anything, on its own.”

“What kind of program?”

“I’m sure I wouldn’t know. Judging by its location, though, I could make a guess.”

“Please,” said Montag, “guess away.”

Clu spun the printout around and pointed at his changed lines. “This section here governs the, mm, I’m not sure what you’d call it, exactly. It’s the point where the template is imprinted on the program and keeps it functioning while the changes are implemented. Now, that’s just fine for programs. We don’t need much to function. But if you wanted something more complicated…”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know,” said Clu, “an animal, maybe?”

Montag sat back in his chair and looked deep in thought. “I spoke to Rutherford.”

“Oh?”

“He corroborated your story. You came, you made the updates, you left. But he wouldn’t give up a source for the rumors,” Montag mused. “He was nervous as hell.”

“You think there’s something to it? Dr. Hellard figured out how to change a person?” He set the stack of papers back on Montag’s desk. “Even if he did, why would he hide it? Something like that would secure him funding for years.” 

Montag looked at him sharply. “We’re not in the business of changing people.”

That, more than anything, tested Clu’s ability to nod and smile to the limits. He could forget it sometimes, but to Montag and who knew how many others besides, Clu wasn’t human. Wasn’t a person. He was barely more than a man-shaped object that could be relied upon to work. A thinking machine, but still a machine. “Fair enough. But it can’t be proved unless there are records of… Oh.”

“What?”

“You said there were computer failures.”

Montag seemed to consider that, and Clu didn’t say anything. Things like this were always more effective when people were allowed to come to their own conclusions- maybe with a little nudge or two along the way. “…He’s covering his tracks.” Montag seemed to think on that for a moment. “The data may be gone, but he can be tested.”

That… All right, he hadn’t been expecting that, but Clu was willing to see where Montag went with it. “What do you mean?”

“We’ve attempted digitizing people before. Dr. Hellard shouldn’t have a problem volunteering unless he knows something I don’t.”

The laser? Montag wanted to digitize Hellard as a test of loyalty? Clu had thought that this would play out in mutual backstabbing, just enough to keep his own program under the radar, but Montag had taken it in a whole new direction. All Clu could do was dig in his nails and hold on. He had no idea where this was going to end up, and for a minute he almost regretted not just lying low and letting Flynn do whatever it was he was doing. Why did his best-laid plans always get away from him? It was like a curse. Maybe that was just what happened when bits of them hinged on other people.

That was how Clu found himself back in the server room. Things looked worse this time. Everyone was on edge. Rutherford barely even looked up when they came in- he looked like he hadn’t slept. None of them looked rested, actually, and empty coffee cups littered every surface. Every so often the air would be punctuated by another curse as something else was discovered broken or missing. 

When Montag made his request Dr. Hellard looked incredulous. “Sir, we just don’t have the time. Half the drives are failing. I’m fighting fires on too many fronts to count, here.”

Montag looked at the room’s activity. It was half frantic and half exhausted, like most of the people had burned out hours ago. “And are you making headway?” 

“…No.”

“Then you’ll have no problem running a simple test?”

Hellard made an annoyed noise in the back of his throat. “Why me? We’ve got test subjects. Lots of them. Isn’t that the point?”

“Think of it this way,” Clu said helpfully, “knowing what the system looks like on the inside gives you a unique perspective on coding.”

Hellard gave him a flat look and didn’t bother responding to that. Instead he looked back at Montag. “If you’re going to insist.” He shuffled into place, in front of the laser. “You’re the man who signs the paychecks, after all. You can do what you like.”

At a look from Montag, one of the assistants started the laser. It hummed as it started up. The pitch rose slowly, from a hum to a whine. Clu had heard it a hundred times before and didn’t pay much attention until the sound plateaued for half a second. Then it kept rising. Clu frowned. It didn’t usually sound like that. What was-?

A sudden thought made him go stiff. If the virus had reached the laser controls but not corrupted them completely-

The laser’s whine rose to a scream, and sparks spat from its underside. Hellard turned to look. “Wh-?”

The beam that shot out was so bright that Clu had to throw his arms over his eyes. He stumbled back and tripped over something soft- someone else, probably- and the room was so full of voices and the laser’s scream and a sound like lightning that his ears rang. It ended in a deafening bang and a series of sizzling pops. The silence afterward pressed in on him like a blanket. All he could smell was ozone, an acrid chemical smoke, and something charred and familiar. Clu opened his eyes. There was nothing but blackness. He couldn’t see a thing. Was he blind? No, no, he couldn’t be. The power draw must have blown out the lights, that was all. He took a breath and choked on it. It was nothing but bitter dust and smoke. 

He felt around on the floor. He found the corner of a desk, someone’s lost pen, and a shard of metal that was so hot it burned his fingers and made him yelp. Someone across the room groaned. Then voices started to kick in, one by one. Mutterings and hellos and are-you-all-rights. Montag’s voice cut through the dark like a knife.

“What the hell just happened?”

There was a moment of silence while no one was sure who was supposed to answer, and in that moment the emergency lights kicked in. They bathed the room in a pale glow. Clu blinked the spots out of his vision. Every time he shut his eyes he saw a purple smear in the shape of the laser. When he looked up, he saw what had become of the machine itself. It was still mostly intact, but a panel had blown off the side with enough force to embed it in the wall. What he could see of the inside was a blackened, burnt-out mess of melted wiring. Bluish smoke curled out of it.

He smelled that burnt scent again. He recognized it, he thought- it smelled like cooking, like an oven set too high. Meat. Burnt meat?

Then he discovered what had become of Hellard. 

He lay on the floor, on his back. At least Clu thought he did. The man had been nearly cut in half. His body was spread in a twisted V, and most of what Clu could see was precision-cut muscle and blackened bone. The wall behind him bore a singed and smoking pit. There was no blood at all. The laser had cauterized him neatly.

“Oh my god,” someone said, and then said it again, until it was a half-voiced drone. Clu could only stare at Hellard’s body.

A handful of army firefighters showed up after that but there was no fire to fight. Then there were the paramedics, who had no patients and instead stood around wondering at Hellard’s broken body and avoiding being anywhere near the laser’s firing path. It wasn’t like it could do anything to them now. The machine was only fit for the junk heap. Clu stayed out of the way and tried not to think about how it was lunchtime and the smell of cooked Hellard was almost making him hungry, because that was quite possibly the worst thing that had ever occurred to him in the entirety of his existence.


	15. Chapter 15

Clu couldn’t take his eyes off Hellard’s body. It was hard to think of it as human, as something more than meat and skin, but Hellard’s head was intact and his eyes stared blankly at nothing. Clu didn’t know what to think of his program taking this path. On the one hand, it was too big, too flashy, too obvious. On the other, he couldn’t help a little thrill of visceral glee. He’d never have to bow to Hellard’s whims again. Too bad Montag hadn’t been standing on the firing line, as well- all his problems gone in one fell swoop. But he’d never been that lucky.

Though it wasn’t as if his program had planned this. There was no way for it to see what was happening here, in the user world, and if the laser hadn’t been turned on at that exact moment it would have gone on corrupting the controls quietly and unobtrusively. It was only chance that the laser had gone out in a bang. This way… Maybe this way was better: Hellard dead, and the laser in ruin. They couldn’t go on with their project. Not after this.

“You,” said Rutherford, and Clu looked up. The other man was getting to his feet. He’d cut himself at some point, maybe on a shard of the laser itself, and his white sleeve was stained with blood. He stared at Clu like a man possessed. “The problems started after you made that update. You broke the laser.” He looked to Hellard’s body, and back at Clu. “It was you. You killed him!”

And with that, everything came crashing down. Clu froze up. Part of his mind seemed to be skipping, and all it was doing was saying no over and over. Montag was right there, right there. They were going to find out, they were going to remake him- or they wouldn’t. They didn’t have the laser. They’d kill him, or they’d reshape him the old-fashioned way, with long days and small spaces, pain and small rewards when he was broken enough to be good. He couldn’t go through that. He couldn’t, he’d rather die, he…

He was calm, all of a sudden. Maybe it was a crisis mode. Maybe it was his newfound experience with separating himself from… Himself, but he was able to get under control. The panicking part was shunted off behind a door somewhere where its voice was muffled. He was left with quiet and logic. Clu chanced a split-second glance at Montag but there was no dark certainty on his face and he knew he had time. Not much, true, but enough for a fighting chance. Barely three seconds had passed since Rutherford’s accusation. Clu steeled himself and turned to look at the man. This was going to be the acting job of his life. 

“Excuse me?”

“You killed him,” Rutherford’s voice rose, “you sabotaged us and you killed him!”

“Doctor Hellard is- was a good man. I didn’t kill him. I didn’t sabotage anything. How could you say that? I’d never even think of… Why would you even-?” Clu paused and made himself look blank, like he was thinking. One, two, three- all right, that was long enough for dramatic effect. He put his face through a short but complex series of expressions. Slow-dawning realization. Horror. Betrayal. His mouth worked silently, and when he spoke it was a hoarse and disbelieving accusation. “It was you!” 

“What?” Rutherford sputtered, and Clu knew to press the advantage while he had it. All eyes were on the two of them. Clu took a step forward and was gratified when Rutherford stepped back in turn. That was good. It made him look like he had the upper hand; it was all about projection. He saw Montag shooing the firefighters and paramedics away, out of the corner of his eye. They didn’t have clearance for any of this.

“Who are you working for? Whose payroll are you on, hm? The Chinese? The Iranians? Or is this corporate espionage?” Clu took another step forward with each accusation, and Rutherford kept backing up. “It is corporate, isn’t it? Someone’s trying to take all this for themselves, and you’re nothing but their hands. Well, you picked the wrong man to take the fall.”

“What? I’m not a spy!”

“So you’re saying I’m a spy, then? Is that it?”

“I didn’t say anyone was a spy. I said you sabotaged-“

“It comes to the same thing, doesn’t it? Spy or saboteur?” Clu stopped. Raised an eyebrow. “But… Really? You’re going to try and pin this on me?”

Rutherford grit his teeth. “I’m not pinning anything on anyone. I don’t know what you did or who you’re working for but I know you did this.”

Clu couldn’t help it. He laughed, and stifling it just made it harder to stop. He shoved his knuckles up against his mouth. “I’m sorry,” he said, when he finally got it under control, “I’m sorry, but do you know who you’re talking to? Do you know what I am?” He flicked his badge with his fingernail. “I’m not a civilian contractor. Subjectively, I’m over a thousand years old. I’m physically incapable of lying. My duty is to serve the users; I can’t disobey. I couldn’t betray Dr. Hellard even if I wanted to- I’m not even human.” He took another step forward. “You made a big mistake.”

“You’re-“ Rutherford was flinching away from him now, whenever he got close, “you’re a subject?”

“Subject one.” Clu tipped his head in Montag’s direction. “Just ask the General.”

“Then rectification doesn’t work.” Rutherford looked at Montag anxiously. “Sir, listen to me, he’s broken his programming, he-”

Clu curled his lip. “Don’t give me that. Now you’re just grasping at straws. I can’t believe you’d sink so low.” Sorry, Rutherford, Clu thought to himself, better you than me. “If I’d somehow managed to destroy the system I would have had one chance. I’ve only been down here twice in the last week. The first time you were right there beside me. The second? I was here with the General.” He turned to their audience, and didn’t look directly at Montag. It was all about the theater of the thing. “That doesn’t seem the least bit strange? Somehow I broke everything and you stood there watching me without even noticing? Now, if it had happened that way, I’d call it incompetence. But I don’t think General Montag hires incompetent men.”

Rutherford clutched at his bleeding arm. He looked- confused, angry, and a little bit afraid. He had to realize that he was losing the argument. “You did something. You could have put a virus in the system.”

“Oh, I just magically pulled a virus out of thin air.” He threw his hands in the air. “Are you even trying, anymore? The archives were corrupt, too. They weren’t connected to a damn thing! I’m not even authorized to touch them!” Clu turned his back on Rutherford.

“I didn’t do anything! It was you!”

“You know what I think?” Clu spoke as if he was talking to himself, but his voice would carry. That was the nature of the room- hard walls, hard floors. “I think you were waiting for a scapegoat. Staying here, all alone over lunch, and then I come in.” He shook his head. “You think to yourself, perfect, now he’s in the access logs, and when I leave you get to work. Take what you need and fry the rest. You know, you actually almost got away with it? The suspicion was on Dr. Hellard, but it was all you, wasn’t it?” He looked down at Hellard’s twisted body, and sighed. “I don’t think he ever even told me to change the templates. That’s just what you told me to remember. Was it worth it? Was it worth becoming a murderer?”

Rutherford’s terror had gone full-blown. His voice shook. “You’re lying,” he turned to Montag, “sir, he’s lying! It’s not true!”

Clu gave Rutherford an unimpressed look, then turned to Montag as well. “Do we really have to listen to this, sir?”

Montag didn’t look convinced, not fully, but he didn’t look like he was about to take out his gun and put an end to Clu right there, either. He looked from Clu to Rutherford. “These are serious accusations.”

Clu shrugged. “Obviously.”

“He’s lying,” said Rutherford.

“Clu,” said Montag, “break your finger.”

“What the hell-?” said Rutherford, and Clu ignored him. He couldn’t afford any hesitation. He wrapped his right hand around his left ring finger and wrenched. There was a pop and a sharp pain that felt like glass in his veins. He hissed and grit his teeth. Montag looked at Rutherford.

“He seems quite obedient to me. If he’s lying, it’s convincing.”

“It’s just a finger,” said Rutherford, “he’s not even a person, he’d do that to hide a murder-”

“Sir.” Clu examined his hand. His finger was already starting to swell around the base. He kept his voice at its calmest. “I think I may only have dislocated it. Shall I try again?”

Montag’s gaze was hard. “Something he wouldn’t do, then. Clu, on your knees.”

Clu didn’t question it, just dropped down. It was tests with Montag, always tests. He’d pass this one if it killed him. Rutherford stared down at him like he didn’t have the first idea what was going on. Clu knelt on the floor with his back straight, one hand cradled in the other, his head held high, and his expression as bland as if he were doing paperwork. “Sir?”

“Come over here to me. Hands and knees. Don’t get up.”

Clu complied. The floor was rough with bits of concrete and debris. It cut into his palms and kneecaps, and made his left hand throb. He’d need his suit dry-cleaned after this or he’d have grey ground into the fabric forever. It was a stupid thought, and one he couldn’t shake. When he reached Montag, all the other man did was look down. 

“Lick my boot.”

He hated Montag, then, more than he ever had before. He didn’t let it show. This was bigger than just him. Clu bit down on his revulsion, bent down, and did it. His tongue made a shiny black stripe against the leather. Dust and grit coated the inside of his mouth. It tasted bitter. Awful. He pushed past it. Made the disgust a small thing in the back of his mind, balled it up and threw it behind the same door where the panicking part of him still gibbered to itself.

Montag shifted and Clu stilled. His boot lifted, disappeared from Clu’s line of sight and then came down on the back of Clu’s neck. Not hard, but insistent. Clu let it press him down until he was crouched, arms and legs folded flat, his cheek pressed against the tile. “Clu was proud,” Montag said conversationally, “arrogant, even. Never knew when to shut his mouth. Could never manage to keep himself under control.” The boot shifted and Clu winced as he got dust in his eye. He had to hold the position. Hold it, hold it, hold it- don’t even twitch, pretend you’re not here. This is someone else’s body. “I don’t think he could debase himself like this, if he had a choice. His ego just couldn’t take it. Never a smart man, really.”

“You… You can’t believe him,” said Rutherford, “he’s acting! He’s making it all up!”

“Anders,” said Montag, and one of the other lab assistants snapped to attention. “Has the power to the computers come back yet?”

“…Just coming up now, sir.”

“Check something for me.” 

Montag’s boot was cutting into the muscle on the side of Clu’s throat, and pushing his jaw out of alignment. He lifted his chin a little, both so he could see more than the ground and so he wasn’t digging into the side of his cheek with his teeth. Anders looked up from behind a monitor. “Sir?”

“Who was the first to access the archives after the last template update?”

There was the sound of typing. Clu thought back. This was familiar, he thought, there was something about this that… Oh.

Oh.

He didn’t smile. Didn’t laugh. Those desires, too, were made into compacted things that could be dealt with later. He knew what Anders was going to say. This couldn’t have gone better if he’d planned it himself.

“User ID 327259,” said Anders, “Rutherford, Daniel J.”

Montag removed his boot from Clu’s neck and indicated he could get back on his feet. Clu rubbed at his throat and wondered if he’d have a bruise in the shape of a boot print on it tomorrow. Montag barely paid him more mind than he would a table or a chair. “Well. I think that clears things up, don’t you?”

“It’s not true,” Rutherford howled, “it’s not!”

On Montag’s signal Rutherford was dragged away. Clu watched him go impassively. Inside, the panicking voice finally shut up. He couldn’t believe he’d just done that. Or that it had worked. Maybe he wasn’t as unlucky as he’d thought, but Montag, though he might have been satisfied of Clu’s loyalty for the moment, still looked troubled. There was danger there, and he knew that if his obedience was ever called into question again, the next test would be something much, much worse. He couldn’t let that happen. He pasted his false confidence back in place. 

“…Well, it’s a pity about Dr. Hellard and Rutherford, sir- all this unfortunate…” He indicated the room, in disarray as it was. “Maybe now things can get back on track.”

Montag was still watching the door Rutherford had been dragged through. “God willing.”

**

Clu told Jarvis and Rinzler about Hellard’s misfortune that night. Jarvis seemed horrified, and Clu couldn’t get a read off Rinzler one way or the other. He seemed more interested in Clu’s splinted fingers than anything to do with the users. Clu wondered if the users had made him that way- if a lack of concern for the big picture made him easier to control- or if Clu himself had written that into him while trying for something else. 

**

The next day went strangely. Clu was left mostly alone. They closed off the lab while they tried to figure out what had gone wrong, exactly, and whether any of their equipment was salvageable. He knew just from being there when the laser had blown that most of it wasn’t. It put a spring in his step that he had to consciously hold back. He was supposed to be saddened by this turn of events, not dancing around like an idiot.

He walked past Montag’s office a few times just to see what was happening. Each time, Montag seemed to be on the phone with someone else and looking more and more haggard with each call. Clu only caught snippets, but the best one was from a voice Clu could tell was Hardington even from the hall. All he caught was corrupt archives before Montag’s secretary closed the door, but that was enough to carry him through the day with a smile. His virus had to be in Encom’s systems by now. He wondered how they were dealing with it. He wondered if they’d even found it, and he wondered what Flynn was doing. If he was progressing at all. Flynn hadn’t forgotten him, had he? Or been stopped outright? Surely not. Flynn was Flynn, and Clu couldn’t see him being bested by mere bureaucrats. The user world’s rules may have been different, but that wasn’t something he could see changing. Flynn was the person who’d defeated the MCP, a thousand cycles past. He wouldn’t let a little thing like a man stop him.

Would he?

Now that things were, once again, out of his hands, the restlessness started creeping back in. His concentration was shot. He couldn’t help coming up with plan after half-baked plan in his off hours. There had to be something more he could do. He just didn’t know what it was.

**

Clu slept, and he dreamed.

He dreamed that he still ran the grid. That he’d never left, but somehow it had become a crumbling and hollow thing. His buildings came apart faster than he could fix them. He had help shoring them up, but every time he turned his head half of his people seemed to disappear. Eventually he was almost alone. Only Rinzler remained at his side as he tried to stem the tide of entropy, and when Clu shouted at Rinzler to help him he realized that the other program was crumbling as well. Hollow, and rotting from the inside. As Rinzler laid his hands beside Clu’s, great cracks formed in his forearms from the strain. He began to fall apart, and Clu found his voice stolen from him when he tried to tell him to stop.

“Clu?”

Clu startled as Jarvis shook him awake. He fought Jarvis off by reflex, still halfway in a dream world, and it took a minute for his heart to stop hammering so hard. When it twigged that he was still in his own bed he groaned and turned over. “What do you want?” 

Jarvis answered, but he was talking too quickly for Clu to understand. Clu scrubbed at his eyes. He’d never been a fast thinker just after waking up, and Jarvis wasn’t helping. What time was it? Had he slept late? He was supposed to be somewhere. He thought he was, anyway- or was he? What day was it? Jarvis kept talking, and Clu squinted at him. 

"Slower this time. What?"

"Have you seen the news?"

"Oh, yes. I watch it while I'm unconscious.” He wished Jarvis would stop talking. The clock said didn’t have to be up quite yet, and sleep was precious. “Of course not. What are you going on about?"

"User Kevin Flynn is out of the grid! He's broadcasting right now, live-"

That woke Clu up like ice water over his head. He'd thought... He'd thought that he'd at least have some warning before that happened. Apparently not. He was on his feet in a flash and nearly knocked Jarvis over in his dash to the main room. The TV was on. Sure enough, there was Flynn. He was somewhere Clu didn't recognize, somewhere with a podium and a huge screen behind him. Images flashed past. Most were clips of inside the grid. Places Clu knew like the back of his hand. He spared a moment to worry at the thought that they weren't coming for him after all, but tamped it down. He couldn’t think about that now. He had to… Trust Flynn, however much that still felt bizarre to think. "We should probably get dressed."

"Huh?"

"We're involved, aren't we? Someone's going to show up sooner or later."

"You don't think-” said Jarvis, and then he fell silent.

"What?"

The other program looked uneasy. "What’s he going to do to us? He has to know we’re out here, somewhere. We fought against him." Jarvis rubbed his thumb against the side of his hand, a long-absent nervous tic. “Maybe he’ll derezz us. Do you think he’ll derezz us?”

“I doubt it. He’s not that sort of man.” The idea of Flynn seeking revenge- there was a time Clu could have pictured it, but not now. Not after the last encounter with him. All Clu could do was put his faith in the man who'd made him. Strange how that didn't seem so terrible as it might have been, once. He went back to his room and pulled his clothes out of the closet. He barely paid attention to what he grabbed. There were so many other, bigger things to think about. Behind him, Rinzler disentangled himself from the sheets and eyed him in a barely-awake sort of way. Clu tossed clothes at him. "You're going to need those."

Rinzler made a noise that maybe meant why or too early or go away, I’m trying to sleep, here, but he started pulling his shirt on anyway. He did it with his eyes shut. Clu was in the process of putting his socks on when there was a cry from the main room, followed by Jarvis reappearing in the doorway. "They're outside!"

"Who's outside?" Clu frowned. "Wait, what? Where? Here?"

Jarvis disappeared back into the main room and didn’t wait for Clu to follow. “Outside the main gate! It's on TV- they’re just- I don’t know, people with cameras, they cut to them for a second and I realized where they were-”

Clu pulled his sock on and followed Jarvis. For a second, before the feed cut back to Flynn, Clu could see a shot that was clearly from the front of their prison. It was a seething mass of people, bristling with cameras. 

“-A revolution for what we know about sentient life, and the conscious mind,” Flynn’s voice came through the speakers crisp and clean, and it sent a shiver through Clu. There was still a part of him that was drawn to that voice. He looked like a totally different person onstage. More authoritative. More like Clu, in a way, which was an odd thought. “All this time we’ve looked to the stars for new worlds, when we should have been looking within. This is the end of sickness, of suffering, of hunger. Imagine resources constrained only by the energy supply it takes to produce them. As a wise man once said, a still more glorious dawn awaits. The only thing that remains to us is to reach out and shape it.”

When Flynn paused to take a drink from the glass on his podium, the feed cut to a clip of Flynn giving a speech long ago. It was eerily like watching himself. Clu found himself mouthing along to the words. In there- is our destiny. 

The feed came back to Flynn. He looked more serious now, more somber. He looked into the camera and it felt like the user was staring straight at him. “Some people aren’t ready for that future. Certain events have come to my attention; my work was in the process of being capitalized on, not as a revolution, but as a regression. Instead of celebrating a new form of intelligence when it was discovered, it was twisted and used. Imagine if you could make a person to order,” Flynn knit his fingers together. “Imagine if you could take someone and carve out the parts that made them who they were, and replace them with what was convenient to you. That very thing was done with programs made flesh, both through the military, under a top secret project headed by General Jacob Montag, and in the preliminary stages of commercial production. As much as it pains me to say it, the current CEO of Encom, Kurt Hardington, is complicit in the scheme.” Flynn paused. “Make no mistake, whether or not it’s easy for you to think of programs as people, they are. They may not be the same as us but they think, they feel, and it wouldn’t have stopped there. There was research into applying the same changes to human beings like you or me. Programs were nothing but an easier place to start.”

“…I was telling the truth?” Clu mumbled, and shook his head. That wasn’t important right now. He turned to Jarvis. "Did they say why there were people outside?"

"I don't know. I missed that part."

Rinzler wandered out of the bedroom. He was still half-dressed, with a sleepy look on his face and his hair in disarray, but when he saw Flynn onscreen he stopped dead. It wasn't a crash or a soft reboot. He just went quiet and still, barely breathing. Clu didn’t know what to make of it but he had no desire to tempt fate, and he snatched up the remote. The screen went dark. Rinzler kept up his blank stare for a long second before snapping out of it, and Clu watched him, but he didn’t do anything particularly strange after that.

“We should go down there,” Clu said slowly, "they have to know we’re here. They have to be here for us. No need to disappoint the crowd."

Jarvis looked dubious. "You think Ms. Pola will open the gates?"

"Probably not, but we should at least find out what's going on. I don’t like being left in the dark." Clu toed his shoes on and opened their front door. There was no one in the courtyard, but he could hear a distant roar that might have been traffic or voices or distantly-echoing waves. It was hard to tell. He went down the steps. When he went to open the door into the main building he found it locked; that had never happened before. He knocked. "Hello?" 

There was no answer. He pounded on it with the side of his fist. 

"Open this door,” Clu called, and then he kicked it. It made a satisfyingly loud bang, but no one came to investigate. “I’m talking to you! I know you can hear me!” 

Still, nothing happened. He frowned. The locked door made his captivity sink in, then; of course it wouldn't have mattered if it was unlocked, there was still the front of the building, Pola, the metal door with its deadbolts, the front gate... He kicked the bottom of the door in frustration. It accomplished precisely nothing, and it made his foot hurt. Jarvis came up behind him looking bewildered.

"What are you doing?"

“The door’s locked.”

“So?”

“So it won’t open.” Clu looked at Jarvis, “you’re a well of useless trivia. Do you know how to pick a lock?”

“No. But we’re not supposed to open locked doors, anyway.”

“What’s your point?”

Jarvis gave him a blank and uncomprehending look. “It’s not allowed.”

Clu made an irritated noise and turned to Rinzler, but he knew even before asking that it would be pointless. Rinzler was no more able to go against his programming than Jarvis was, which left Clu as the only one who could manage to open the door and get them out- not that that helped any, when Clu was neither strong enough to kick down a reinforced door or knowledgeable enough about the inner workings of locks to pick it. 

“Useless thing,” he said, and kicked the door once more for good measure. He could still hear what sounded like a distant roar of voices and it was all the more galling to be stopped by something so simple. He shut his eyes and thought hard. There had to be a way out. The crowd outside, too, had to be there for a reason. Clu remembered telling Alan about their prison. Maybe the user planned to come? Maybe if he waited, his problems would be solved for him?

He hated waiting.

There was a sound from outside. An engine, maybe, and Clu frowned. Was someone here? Had someone come to get them out, or…?

There were more indistinguishable voices. He caught a sound, muffled and odd, that sounded like metal on metal. Maybe the gate lifting. Clu tried not to hope but there was something in him that couldn’t help it, after so long, and he thought of Flynn coming in and opening the doors for them, easy as that- but of course it couldn’t be Flynn. He was elsewhere, giving speeches. Maybe Alan, or Sam, or even the ISO girl. It stung a little to know that those were the only people in the world who might care enough to help him. Even then it was something that was more due to an obligation to Flynn than anything else. 

It was better than nothing. He’d take what he could get.

The lock clicked. Clu stepped away from the door. When it swung open, he spent a few seconds blinking into the dark hallway. All he could make out in the contrast between bright sun and fluorescent lights was a shapeless dark blob. He thought it was Alan, and then the person moved forward, into the light. Clu took an involuntary step back. 

Montag.

He looked- Clu didn’t know how to describe it. He’d seen Montag angry and happy and frustrated, smug and annoyed and tired. This was none of those things. He couldn’t even connect Montag’s expression to a real emotion; his jaw was clenched, his eyes wide and staring, and the way he was looking at Clu was, frankly, unsettling. Like something in him had fractured.

Jarvis blinked at the man. “…Sir?”

Montag didn’t spare a glance for Jarvis. He only had eyes for Clu. “You did this.”

“Did what?” Clu raised his hands and did his best impression of innocence. “I don’t understand.”

“You can knock that crap off right now,” Montag growled, “Rutherford was right all along. You killed Dr. Hellard, and you sabotaged the project, and somehow you brought Kevin goddamned Flynn back from the dead, god only knows how. Worst of all you managed to keep up this charade. How long did it take you to slip your collar?” He shook his head but didn’t take his eyes off Clu. “I always knew you’d be trouble.”

Clu lowered his hands, slowly, cautiously. Montag couldn’t be sure, could he? He couldn’t be certain unless Clu told him straight out. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir. Dr. Hellard’s death was regrettable, yes, but-“

“Regrettable, nothing. You sabotaged the laser controls. I don’t know how, but I know it just like I know you’re a two-faced weasel. It was a good ruse, I have to admit it, but Rutherford checks out. He’s not lying, Clu.”

“Sir?” What was the best way to play this? Spin it on someone else, or ignorance? He went with choice two. For one thing he didn’t have a second scapegoat lined up. “Are you certain? If he is a spy, surely he’ll have been trained not to-“

“Believe me,” said Montag, “I’m certain. You’re lying to me, Clu, lying right to my face.” The word ended on a hiss that raised that hair on the back of Clu’s neck. “I thought we cut that out of you.”

“Wait, what’s going on?” said Jarvis, and they both ignored him completely.

“General, I really think you should calm down-” There was suddenly a gun in Montag’s hand and Clu’s expression froze. 

Montag’s voice was low and dangerous. “Drop the act, or I put a bullet between your eyes.”

Clu’s thoughts congealed into a barely intelligible litany of cursing. Was this a test? Were they past tests? If he kept up the act Montag might think he was still controllable, or he might get his brains blown out. Then again, if he dropped the act it was the same odds. A conversation or yes, just as I suspected, followed by gunfire. He grit his teeth, let all his contempt surface and curled his lip. It felt good. He hadn’t been allowed to be himself for what felt like forever. It was like dropping chains he hadn’t known he was wearing.

“Congratulations,” said Clu, “you’ve been outsmarted by a computer program.” He tilted his head to the side. “I didn’t kill Hellard, though, as much as I’d like to take credit. That was pure accident.” Well. Mostly.

“You think I believe that?” Montag’s finger tightened on the trigger and Rinzler stepped between them. Montag didn’t fire. “Loyal pet, isn’t he.”

Clu bristled. “You know that if you try to hurt him or me, he’ll kill you?”

“Will he? Rinzler’s always been so much better behaved than you were. I think he’d take a bullet and like it.”

Jarvis looked horrified by the whole conversation. “I don’t- what is going on here? I don’t understand any of th-”

Montag flicked the gun to the side. There was a crack and a scream; Jarvis tumbled to the ground and a thick red stain spread along his calf. He pushed himself away as much as he was able. His eyes were huge and terrified, and even when he clutched at the wound blood ran from between his fingers. Montag turned the gun back on Clu. “That’s better.”

Clu’s stomach knotted. “He didn’t do anything!”

“I know,” said Montag, and his voice was horribly rational. “He’s still useful. That’s why he’s not dead.”

“…I hope you know this is pointless,” said Clu, “they know. They all know. Whether you shoot me or not, your career’s over.”

“So killing you won’t make it worse.”

Clu flinched. He always had to open his big mouth. “That’s not-”

“Rinzler,” said Montag, “hold him.” 

Rinzler was on Clu in the blink of an eye. Clu didn’t have time to struggle before his arms were twisted up behind him, and when Montag held out the gun, Rinzler took it. Montag only had to nod and the cold blunt muzzle was digging in under Clu’s chin. He could see Rinzler’s face out of the corner of his eye. He didn’t even look like he cared. 

“I could shoot you myself,” said Montag, “but I think I’ll enjoy this more.” 

Clu swallowed and felt unforgiving metal. “Rinzler, put the gun down!” 

The pressure lessened for a split second, and then it was back. Of course, Montag’s orders superseded his own, he didn’t know why he’d thought that would work. He looked up and found Montag inches away. His eyes were cold and strangely hollow. “How long?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” There was no point in answering Montag. He’d get shot, or he wouldn’t, and Clu had a sneaking suspicion that all he could do was delay the inevitable. Clu frowned and ignored how that made the gun scrape along the underside of his jawbone, and the shiver that sent through him. “What do you think? I’m curious- how good am I?”

“Not good enough.”

There was a clattering of footsteps in the hall behind Montag. He turned, and a voice echoed from around the corner. “Clu! You in here?”

Sam. That was Sam’s voice, and before Clu could warn him away he’d skidded to a stop in the doorway. The look on his face would’ve been funny under other circumstances, but Clu was hard-pressed to find anything funny at the moment.

“…Shit,” said Sam. 

Montag glared at him. “How did you get in here? This is a secure facility-”

“It’s over,” said Sam, “don’t make this worse for yourself. Let them go.”

Montag was looking at Sam now, really looking, and there was a flicker of the same contempt he held for Clu. “You’re Sam Flynn.”

“Uh…”

“Rinzler, kill him.” 

Before Clu could work out what was happening the gun was gone from under his chin and he was whipped to the side. Sam threw himself behind a pillar as Rinzler fired and the bullet hit it with a bang and a puff of concrete dust.

“Stop shooting,” Sam yelled, and Rinzler hesitated.

“Ignore his orders,” said Montag. Rinzler’s hesitation vanished. He seemed on the point of chasing after Sam but stopped when it became clear that he’d have to let Clu go to do it, and Rinzler looked to Montag for guidance. Montag jerked his head at Clu, and just like that the gun was back in place. If this kept up it’d leave a bruise- and a mad laugh bubbled up in him. That was the least of his problems.

Sam’s voice came around the pillar. “Clu, tell him to stop!”

“You don’t think I’ve tried that? Like, oh, I don’t know, earlier when I had a gun in my face? In case you haven’t noticed, it’s still there!” Clu took a deep breath. He could see Jarvis out of the corner of his eye, out of the way and wrapped around his blood-soaked leg but still conscious. Clu swallowed, felt the weight of the metal. He shut his eyes for a brief second. When he opened them Montag had taken a step back, then another. 

Clu thought he’s moving out of splatter range, and that was enough to make him panic. He knew just how futile it was to struggle against Rinzler but it didn’t stop him. Rinzler moved the gun just long enough to pistol-whip him, and when Clu could see straight again it was back in place. There was a thin trickle of blood getting into his eye and Clu winced. 

The gun cocked.

“Sam? Where are you?” 

It was someone else’s voice. Alan’s voice, and the shot never came. Clu eased an eye open to see Alan stopped dead in the open hall behind Montag.

“Run,” said Clu, “he’ll just-“

“All these interruptions.” Montag looked deeply annoyed. “Rinzler, shut him up.” 

Rinzler let go of Clu, and for a split second Clu was free; his dash away was cut short by Rinzler’s hand wrapping itself around Clu’s mouth and yanking him back. When he struggled, that hand slid up to cover his nose, too. Clu strained against it until black spots danced in front of his eyes, sound went tinny and he sagged back against Rinzler. Sam’s voice piped up from his hiding place. “Alan, get out while you can-”

Montag bared his teeth. “This has gone on long enough. Rinzler, kill him.”

Clu bit the inside of his lip and Alan lurched forward, hand outstretched. “No!”

And Rinzler… Rinzler stopped.

“Shoot him,” Montag shouted, and Rinzler’s hand trembled, but he didn’t. The gun was still digging into Clu’s jaw but out of the corner of his eye he could see Rinzler’s face. It was fixed on Alan, and full of something that was awe or fear or maybe both. Clu tried to yell at Alan, tell him what to say, but all he could get through was a jumbled mess of syllables. Luckily Sam seemed to have caught on.

“Alan! Tell Tron to drop the gun!”

“Tron?” Alan said wonderingly, and a new shiver went through Rinzler at that. “Just… Just put the gun down. Okay?” Rinzler’s hand shook harder. The gun moved away at a glacial pace, and Clu could feel the other program’s grip loosening.

“You listen to me,” Montag snapped, “shoot, and shoot now! That’s an order!”

Rinzler’s hand convulsed. Clu tore himself from his grip and there was a bang, deafeningly loud. He had a split second to devote to panic before he hit the ground. He landed badly and pain shot up his arm from his damaged hand; it collapsed under him. It took him a long second of crouching on the ground to realize that other than that, he didn’t hurt. There was no blood, no wound. Rinzler had missed. Rinzler had missed. How likely was that? 

He looked up. 

Rinzler hadn’t missed. He just hadn’t been aiming for Clu.

Montag was lying on his back, a ragged hole in his shoulder and a pool of red spreading beneath him. He looked to have hit his head on the concrete when he went down.

“You shot the General,” Jarvis said numbly, “you shot the General. Is he dead?”

Clu turned back to look at Rinzler. He was frozen in place, arm outstretched and gun in hand, and Clu could tell from the hollowed-out look in his eyes that the shooting had triggered a soft crash. Clu got to his feet. He pried the gun out of Rinzler’s hands. It wouldn’t be long before Rinzler came back to himself; there was nothing he could do until then. Meanwhile there were the rest of them; Clu turned to see Alan pressing Montag’s balled-up coat against the bullet wound while Sam approached Jarvis with caution.

Clu went to Jarvis’ side. The other program’s leg was folded up under him, soaked in blood. “…Sir?” When he turned to look at Clu he was twice as pale as usual, parchment-white. “H- how bad is it?”

Clu knelt down for a closer look. All he could see was a sticky red mess. There were two wounds. That was good, wasn’t it? It meant the bullet wasn’t in him. But aside from that… “I have no idea.”

“It’s not that bad,” said Sam, and Clu looked up to find him barely a foot away. “You got lucky, it went clean through the muscle. I don’t think it hit anything too important.” He pushed Jarvis’ pant leg up above the knee. The bullet hole was in the right side of Jarvis’ calf, and the exit wound behind it. “Nothing that’ll kill you fast, anyway.” He shucked off his thin sweatshirt and wrapped it around the wound, tight.

“Sorry,” said Jarvis, “m’ruining it.”

“Whatever, I’ll get another one.” Sam looked down at the red spreading on the cotton with a critical eye. “You’ll have to get that stitched up. I don’t think you even nicked a tendon, though. I’ve had worse.” He got to his feet. “Can you stand?”

Clu hooked his shoulder under Jarvis’ and helped him to his feet. Foot, rather. Jarvis didn’t test putting pressure on his wounded leg, which was probably for the best. Sam took his other arm, and between them they ferried Jarvis over to sit down against the wall.

Clu looked at Sam. “You were shot?”

“Me? Nah. There was this thing with one of those steel reinforcing rods, though. You know, the ones they put in concrete?” He shook his head. “Nasty.”

His hands felt sticky, and Clu realized he had a thin layer of Jarvis’ blood drying against his nails. He scrubbed them off as best he could in the grass. When he looked up, Sam had joined Alan in staring at Montag. 

“Now what?” said Sam, “I mean, he’s unconscious, but we sort of- at least he’s not dead.” There was a pause, and then awful realization ran across Sam’s face. “Oh my god, is shooting a General treason? We’re going to go to prison. I don’t want to go to prison. Fuck, they’ll send us to gitmo-”

“It was self-defense,” Alan didn’t look up. “You saw it. I saw it.”

“And it’s his gun,” said Clu.

“There,” said Alan, “you see? And he’s a disgraced man, with his word against two fine, upstanding members of the community and several experimental subjects- from an unethical experiment, no less- that he attempted to murder. It will work out. We’ve got the lawyers to make it work out.”

Sam looked startled. “I had no idea you could be so…”

“Calculating?” Alan adjusted the makeshift bandage. “How do you think I survived in business?”

Clu turned back toward Rinzler. He could see the telltale signs of the other program coming out of stasis, and Clu waited as animation came back into Rinzler’s eyes and he didn’t look so dead, so still. “Rinzler?”

Rinzler purred, low in his throat and half-confused, like he didn’t remember exactly how he’d gotten there. That was good enough. Clu touched Rinzler’s face and it seemed to wake the program up fully. Rinzler tipped Clu’s chin up to look at the scrape on the underside of his jaw. Rinzler frowned and Clu shook his head. 

“It’s not your fault.”

Rinzler seemed to remember his surroundings, then, and everything around them. He looked from Clu to Jarvis to Sam to Montag, sprawled on the ground, and finally Alan. He stopped there. His purr nearly disappeared. Clu almost thought he’d stopped breathing, and Rinzler made a sound under his breath, barely more than a garbled whisper, that might have been user. Alan looked up and really met his stare for the first time. He did an incredulous double-take. “He looks just like me.”

“I told you,” said Sam, “programs look like their users, so...”

Alan handed Montag’s makeshift bandage off to Sam. He stood, and looked at Rinzler wonderingly. “But I wrote Tron in eighty-two.” He got closer. Clu wasn’t sure if he appreciated that, for the way Rinzler was going tense and strange behind him. “It’s been decades. He still looks- you still look,” he addressed Rinzler directly, “barely more than thirty. But wasn’t he calling you Rinzler?”

Rinzler whined, deep in his throat, and Alan frowned. He seemed to notice Rinzler’s jagged white scar for the first time.

“What happened to you?”

The whine increased in pitch. Rinzler was trembling, Clu could feel it. When Alan reached up to touch the scar Rinzler flinched away, like he was terrified. Alan frowned. “He’s just-” said Clu, “it’s a long story.”

“He’s afraid of me?”

“Not exactly.” Clu could see it in Rinzler’s eyes. There was fear, but there was awe and guilt and sheer overwhelmed wonder, too. The guilt, particularly, was worrying. He didn’t know if it was Tron breaking through or some kind of holdover, but either way it wasn’t a good sign for stability. He could barely imagine the snarl Rinzler’s code was in, thanks to the trained apes they had running things.

“I hate to break this up,” said Sam, “but maybe we should, you know, call an ambulance for this guy and run for the hills? I don’t really want to hang around here much longer than I have to.”

“We should-” Clu shook his head. “Sam’s right. Let’s get out of here.”

Jarvis’ hand rested on the cloth around his calf, where blood was starting to seep out the bottom. “We’re not allowed to leave.”

“Sam, tell Jarvis he can leave.”

“Why?”

“Because he didn’t have the benefit of your father removing his insatiable compulsion to do as he’s told.”

“Oh. Uh, you’re all allowed to get out of here. You don’t have to stay.”

Clu looked up at what had been their home thoughtfully. It was full of belongings but nothing that was really his; it was all things that had come with the building, or been bought to serve a purpose. Clu found that he could leave it all behind without a second thought. Jarvis looked at Montag. “What about the General?”

“Is he going to bleed to death anytime soon?”

“No,” said Sam, “but if he does die-”

“Leave him.” Clu looked at the walls suspiciously. “This place is riddled with cameras and who knows what. They’ll have heard the gunshots. Was there anyone at the front desk when you came in?”

“No.”

“Then Pola’s here somewhere as well. Unless Montag got her to leave, because he didn’t want witnesses when he killed me…” Clu shook his head. “Never mind. Let’s get out of here while we can.”

Clu helped Jarvis up again, and they left Montag’s jacket wrapped around his shoulder. Montag groaned when Sam took the pressure off. By the time they were filing out the door Montag’s eyes were fluttering open, and Clu paused in the doorway to give him his nastiest smile as he left. Montag clutched at his shoulder. 

“Come back here,” said Montag, “you come back here- right now- don’t you run-”

“Sorry, General,” Clu’s smile widened as Montag grunted and turned over, reaching for the gun that was both unloaded and well out of his reach. “We’re going AWOL. Have fun with the investigation, though. I’m sure you’ll come out of it just fine.” He waved one-handed as he left, a mockery of a salute. “Or not.” The door closed behind him, cutting off Montag’s roar of rage. The grin stayed on his face until he caught Sam giving him an unimpressed look. “What?”

“Really?” said Sam, “you had to taunt him?”

“Well, I wasn’t going to let him have the last word.”

“It was a little childish,” said Alan.

Sam laughed. “A little?”

There was still blood oozing down his face, and Clu swept it away impatiently. “When you break out of prison, you can lecture me on how maturely you handled the situation.”

“We broke you out.”

“Details.” 

They passed Pola’s desk. It looked strangely bare without her, and Clu let Jarvis rest against it while he took a closer look at the deadbolted door. Now that he was up close to it, the sound of voices from outside was louder. He still couldn’t understand anything they were saying. 

He’d never have gotten this far on his own, he realized. Probably never would have made it out of the courtyard, and he’d be dead in the grass while Montag stood over his body even now. He drummed his fingers against the door and tried to remember how it opened. 

“…Thank you,” said Clu, not quite wanting to turn around and say it to their faces. “And before you ruin that with sarcasm, I mean it. I’d be dead by now if it wasn’t for you. Both of you.” Sam gave him a flat look. 

“That’s just weird, coming from you.”

Clu looked back at him and frowned. “See? There you go, ruining it.” Behind Sam, Jarvis was twisted backwards, feeling along Pola’s desk. Clu looked at him. “What are you doing?”

“There’s a release catch for the door. I remember her using it.” Jarvis’ fingers skated over the underside. “Somewhere here- ah. Got it.” There was a click, and then the door echoed it with the heavy thump of deadbolts disengaging. “I’m still not sure we should be doing this.”

“Sam,” said Clu, “should we be doing this?”

“Hell, yeah. You have my permission as a user to bust the fuck out of this place.”

“Oh.” Jarvis brightened. “Okay.”

Clu grabbed the doorknob. The door swung open easily, much more smoothly than its thickness would suggest. He stepped out into the bright sun and froze. The gate was open and there were- people. There were people with cameras and microphones and the moment he stepped outside it was like a million flashbombs going off at once. He threw his arm over his eyes and tried to step back but Sam and Alan were behind him and they just ended up pushing him farther out. Rinzler came out after, helping Jarvis. All the people were talking at once, making a solid wall of sound. “What,” said Clu, and it was almost lost in the din, “who are these people?”

“The media,” Sam said in his ear, “congratulations, you’re famous. Smile for the cameras.”

There was a time when having all eyes on him would have been easy. There was a time when it was all but expected. Now it was… Harder. Clu went through the motions as best as he could remember. Head held high. Shoulders low. Back straight. He couldn’t bring himself to smile, but he’d never looked terribly dignified when he smiled, anyway. He almost envied Rinzler in that moment. The program always had the same sort of intimidating aura no matter what he did.

Sam and Alan wormed their way through the crowd, peppering it with no comments and meaningless sound bites. They opened up a space big enough for Clu and Jarvis and Rinzler to pass through behind them. It was like weaving through a thick hedge, a crushing wall of people on all sides until suddenly the crowd ended. Alan’s car was parked against the curb. Alan unlocked it remotely and when they got inside, closing the doors was like dropping into the sea. The noise outside became a muffled roar.

“Why wouldn’t you talk to them?” Clu asked, “I thought attention was the point.”

Alan smiled. “There’s nothing that gets the press more interested than not talking to them. Besides, we were there long enough for them to get some good pictures.” He turned to Jarvis. “We’ll get you a doctor for that leg- you’ll be right as rain.”

As the car started moving, it began to dawn on Clu that they’d done it. They were free. There would be no more orders, no more coercion. No more keeping himself under tight control. No more cameras in the walls. He could feel the gentle vibration of Rinzler’s breathing against his left side, and on his right, Jarvis was crushed in just as close. The back seat wasn’t meant to hold three full-grown men, but Clu didn’t mind. For the first time in a long, long time, he thought that everything was going to be fine.

Everything was going to be just fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lovely fanart of Rinzler in this chapter by [Basalt](http://basalt.livejournal.com/)


End file.
